One of the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC) s key design tools, the Urban Street Design Manual (USDM), has been included in a university degree course in the Emirate.
The manual will be a permanent fixture in the curriculum at Abu Dhabi University (ADU) from September.
"Piloted in the 2013 educational year, the USDM was taught at ADU as part of the Highway Engineering course for civil engineering students, and plans have been put into place to implement the UDSM into the Urban Design course for architecture students. As a result of its success, the USDM will now be permanently included in these courses at the university from September 2014 onwards," according to Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council.
Abdulla Al Shamsi, Executive Director, Strategic Affairs, UPC, said: "The UPC is always striving to plan Complete Sustainable Communities across the Emirate. A suite of manuals, including the USDM, were created specifically to achieve this objective.
"The UPC often collaborates with universities across the Emirate and the wider UAE to run courses and workshops to build awareness not only of the technical manuals, but also of the wider role our young students can play by embarking on a career in urban planning to support the realisation of Vision 2030. We are extremely proud that this collaborative approach has led to our award-winning Urban Street Design Manual having been chosen as a permanent fixture, for the first time, on ADU s syllabus, and we look forward to working together in a similar manner with other Government and private educational institutions," he added.
Commenting on the initiative, Dr. Aly Nazmy, Interim Provost of Abu Dhabi University and the Dean of the College of Engineering said: "This initiative unveils new horizons to our engineering students, and gives them the opportunity to be introduced to this unique Manual of international calibre in urban street design.
Source: WAM