the island of future

In my opinion, I think that Al-Saadiyat Island is the most interesting one because it will contain a lot of interesting new developments and international museums, theaters and hotels. In think that these developments will be very useful to Abu Dhabi because these developments will give more global attention to Abu Dhabi and will rise to a higher level, but that will not give a positive effect to the environments and global warming issue in Abu Dhabi.

"In Hadid’s Performing Arts Centre concept, a 62 metre high building is proposed housing five theatres – a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and a flexible theatre with a combined seating capacity for 6,300 seats." *

Gehry Partners >>>>>

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/aghn/aghn.html *

TDIC developments in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is starting some new projects in several areas in the city, and in the other way they are trying to be more pollution free and environment friendly city. The new projects will be constructed in the next 10 years and it's going to change the map of the city and the life style of the people who are living in it. I personally think that these projects are going to be green from the outside as a view only but they will cause more pollution damage, because they will increase carbon rates while constructing them and will damage the sea life and the wild life, and a lot of trees will cut down to build them.

http://www.tdic.ae/Default.aspx

the ten guiding principles

Zero carbon: trying to decrease the carbon footprint emission of the world and zero emission of the city.

Zero waste: means recycling all the main materials and elements and reuse them in other useful things.

Sustainable transport: use clean vehicles technology that helps in decreasing the pollution and global warming.

Local and sustainable materials: trying to use local materials to benefit the community and environments.

Local and sustainable food: using locally gown food decreasing pollution that occurs from transportation and importing.

Sustainable water: supplying water locally with environment friendly way and meeting the WWF standards.

Natural habitats and wildlife: widen the natural areas that include nature resources to increase the biodiversity of the wildlife.

Culture and heritage: Masdar city will be built with a local design to decrease temperature and make a shade.

Equity and fair-trade: fair trading governments to create the equity and insure a fair and stable life for everyone.

Health and happiness: people in Masdar city will have a healthier life because it's pollution free area.

I think that Masdar will not do some of them 100%. I think they will do sustainable transport, zero carbon and sustainable water. But they can't do a city with a zero waste and local sustainable materials and foods and equity.

The goals of the One Planet Living Programme:
1. Build a world-wide network of One Planet Living Communities and other exemplary projects to demonstrate One Planet Living in action.

2. Establish One Planet Living Centres in each One Planet Living community as a focus for education.

3. Promote the imperative for One Planet Living and its guiding principles to catalyse change with governments, business and individuals.

One planet communities:
Jin Shan (china), Sibaya (South Africa), OPL London project (UK), Meadowbrook Montreal (North America)

The officially endorsed one planet communities:
Sonoma mountain village / Mata de sesimbra / one gallions and one drighton

http://oneplanetliving.com/

2.55 planets to support me

Global warming issue is becoming as serious problem in this century and everyone should look at his actions and life style and look how many carbons he is producing. In this essay I'll talk about my carbon footprint and state some solutions.

There are several problems in my life style that increases my carbon footprint. The first problem is the food, we depends sometimes on imported food that needs a lot of energy and burning oil to be available in the UAE markets. For example the rice, most of the emaratis depends on rice as a main food at their lunches. The second problem is the transportations, a lot of people cannot live without a car, and also don't travel by public busses or another clean vehicles. The last problem is turning on the unneeded and not efficient stuff, most of the carbon footprints per person in the UAE came from the air conditioning and that why the UAE has got the highest rate of carbon footprint in the world. All what was mentioned is my problems and most of the local people problems.

There are so many solutions that can help to decrease my carbon footprint, the first solution is to depend in our food at a locally grown food and seasonally food in order to decrease the carbon emission that produced from shipping. The other solution is traveling by bus or other clean vehicle, and that is impossible without getting support from the government, busses should run by gas or hybrid engines not at diesel.

In conclusion, if one tried to do something he will not affect the whole society, we should join together and do some solutions to our life style.

My opinion about Masdar city

In my opinion, I think that Masdar city will be a model of future living way, and it will not be totally as mentioned and every one knows about it. It will not be zero waste 100%, also they can't change people's life style and their standard of living suddenly and get them used to living in zero-free carbon and zero waste city and change their way of living to a totally environment friendly life style. Personally I wouldn't like to live in Masdar city, because I lived whole of my life in Baniyas and I can't move to another place easily, and it is not equivalent to our culture because we depend on cars, and our culture doesn't allow women to transport by train alone or ride a bicycle. So I can't live there with my family, but if I was alone I would prefer to live in free-carbon city.

USA Cool Cities

1. Seattle: They reduced global warming pollution by more than 60 percent by constructing green buildings and operating alternative fuel vehicles.
2. Washington DC: DC has replaced 414 of its polluting diesel buses with buses that burn natural gases.
3. Houston: convert a substantial portion of the city of fleet of cars and trucks.
4. Marion County/Florida: they use gas-electric hybrid vehicles.
5. The city of Scottsdale: has introduced Arizona’s first green building program which helps builders and home owners learn about how to integrate energy efficiency and water saving.
6. Salt Lake City: they changed 861 traffic lights to LED light signals.
7. Colorado: is working to produce 50 percent of the city electricity with renewable energy by 2017.
8. Charlotte: they switched from a gas only Ford Taurus to a hybrid Toyota Prius or Honda Civic and that would save city taxpayers approximately $800-1200 per vehicle including over $400 in annual fuel cost.
9. Twin Falls/ Idaho: Reduce energy cost and cut pollution by increasing the energy efficiency of its 11 schools.
10. St. Paul: they use a system that uses heat drawn from a biomass-fired power plant.

What Should Be Done In Abu Dhabi To Make People More Aware Of Global Warming?

I think that global warming is something that everyone should be concerned about, because it's an issue that will affect our environment and the generations after us. So we need the people first to know what is global warming and what it can cause to our earth and us, and how did global warming begin or what increases global warming rates? With this knowledge people can resist it and do something that benefits their environment.

I think that wallpapers and basic advertisement ways will not be affective on people. For example, everyone looks at the advertisements that talks about” stop smoking and get a healthier life”, but smokers look at it carelessly and continue smoking. For that reason we need advertisements that include short movies, charts, numbers, pictures of polluted places and facts about what have we done. So to give people the chance to look of what they did to earth and at what rate did our polluting reached. Also we can create an organization that welcomes people to sign up for an agreement for the people who want to participate to live in clean earth and give the people who participated a name and lead and guide them to the right way of living. And when the numbers of participations of this organization increase, it can talk loudly to people around the emirates and can take some serious decisions if there are participations that work in good jobs or responsible about something that affects the environment such as the municipality or the sewerage service department. And by that way we can force the government to deal with some major issues that affects the environment badly, especially if we reached 50% or 60% of participations of the population in Abu Dhabi.

cool cities, coolant of earth

One of the main issues in this century is global warming, this is an important issue and the reason behind that is, because our life now and the next generation depend on it. Global warming is the increase of the atmosphere’s temperature. Its increase is due to two separate issues; greenhouse effect and climate change. Greenhouse effect, this warms the temperature of the atmosphere, its effect is extremely beneficial. Climate change is another example of global warming, research suggests that temperature may increase by between 1.4 to 5.8C by the year 2100. This may be caused by human producing large amount of greenhouse gasses. But our government have to start preparing for climate changes to protect the next generation, because global warming is a serious issue. But as we all know our government already thought of that and started the project “Masdar” which is the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste city fully powered by renewable energy. Construction of Masdar City has now officially commenced with a formal ground-breaking ceremony on February 9, 2008. The City will be constructed over seven phases and is due to be completed by 2016. Masdar’s control center is part of phase one and will be completed by the end of 2010. This is something that we should appreciate because as I said earlier that global warming is a serious issue and our government is working on it now and thinking of our future so lets help them in any way we can so that we can have a good life now and a better future for us and the next generation.