Plans have been rolled out to build Dubai’s Sustainable City and export those projects to the rest of the MENA region. Wassim Adlouni, a board member at Diamond Developers said that the success of the development will play a key role in Dubai’s aims to establish itself as one of the most sustainable cities in the world by 2020. “The Sustainable City project will allow people to see an example of how sustainable living benefits residents, communities and businesses, and that it can be repeated all over the region. Our target is to use the successful Sustainable City here in Dubai as a platform to build other cities here and in other parts of the world, like the rest of the Middle East North Africa,” said Adlouni Dubai Municipality recently formed a special committee for sustainability to study green initiatives and the Sustainability City project has received huge support from them, DEWA, the Government of Dubai Land Department and the RTA, which to plans build an electric shuttle between the community and Emirates Mall. The AED1.1bn community will also include a school, a university, a planetarium, a country club and a community centre with retail and coffee shops. The community will also features a green belt with 20,000 trees and a 5000sqft long water canal, a 600,000sqft solar park and water management system that will be recycled 100% of waste water. Adlouni believes that the project is much more than a beacon of sustainability, but a catalyst to change how people live their lives in Dubai and around the region. “The biggest challenge here and in other countries is that the end users are always looking to re-sell their units and get the benefits for the short term. Our target is to keep the residents for a long time. This will only happen when the community really benefits them and the environment.” The purpose of the Centre of Excellence for Green Development is to help Dubai achieve the aims set out last June in its Integrated Energy Strategy 2030 at the Dubai Global Energy Forum. Source: Travel Daily