“NEW CITIES THAT ARE BEING DEVELOPED IN CHINA, INDIA AND THE REST OF ASIA ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO DRAW ON THE LATEST THINKING, WHERE WE DESIGN CITIES THAT ARE SUSTAINABLE AT EVERY LEVEL”
export processing zones or ports, or for central business districts, retailers, leisure, and so on,” says Harrison.
Changing times In another 20 years, India will have caught up with China in terms of population. Whereas China’s one-child-per-family rule is resulting in an ageing workforce, India’s burgeoning population is projected to be growing at around 0.6 per cent a year. Thriving urban areas will be key, as the country will have to handle the challenge of accommodating a population growing at a faster rate than China’s within a smaller land area. New McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) projections show India’s urban population soaring to 590 million in 2030. The country will also become a nation of upwardly mobile middle-class households. By 2025, the Indian middle classes will have expanded dramatically to 583 million people – some 41 per cent of the population. In fact, cities are being built for the emerging middle classes in many areas of the world. In Azerbaijan, for example, a 200-hectare urban
centre is being developed on the outskirts of Baku, aiming to reclaim lands that were once polluted with oil pits, rail yards and other industrial facilities. Other new purpose-built cities include Mussafah on the
edge of Abu Dhabi. Mussafah is designed as a designated industrial area and is one of several projects designed to reduce the region’s dependency on oil and build the necessary foundations and infrastructure to support a sustainable society in the future. According to Abu Dhabi’s Urban Planning Council, some $200bn will have been pumped into various infrastructure projects in the Emirate by 2013. Cities have always been built according to proximity of
basic resources like water, but it’s now possible to build in all kinds of places, even in previously inhospitable environments such as deserts. In a potential precursor to a futuristic world altered by climate change, it is perhaps comforting to know that purpose-built virtual cities can be situated anywhere. “Whereas in the past cities were located in places for almost prehistoric reasons, that doesn’t need to be the
case any more,” explains Matt Tribe, director at Atkins. “In dealing with climate change, sea-level rises, and other natural processes, planners may now go through a process of taking people away from risk areas, by understanding the best place to locate them.”
Planning perfect cities The advantage of new cities is that sustainability can be built into every aspect of the design. “The new cities that are being developed in China, India
and the rest of Asia are going to be able to draw on the latest thinking, where we design cities that are sustainable at every level. That means how we design individual buildings, and how we find the optimal mix of land uses so we can reduce the need to travel. This is much harder to put in place once you’ve already built your city,” Harrison says. He asserts that sustainability is an increasingly important part of developments he is involved with in China – most recently, a financial district in Chengdu and a new business district in Beijing.
million people are expected to live in Abu
Dhabi by 2030. The Emirate is making a strategic leap towards a new environment that will achieve
sustainable urban planning and
economic growth.
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