How to Build a Sandcastle: An Analysis of the Genesis and Development of Masdar City

Fuelled by an increasing diffusion of “green-consciousness” in urban politics, the eco-city has recently gained momentum. In the last decade, several governments from different areas of the world have approved plans for the construction of new master-planned urban developments aiming to find a balance with nature. The eco-city phenomenon is inscribed in a critical spatio-temporal context and its effects will arguably have a strong influence on our near future. Today, cities drain most of the global resources, have a major impact on the environment, and attract an increasing percentage of the world's population. Should the mainstream projections on 2050 prove to be correct, what we build now is and will be of primary importance. Hence, it is time to bring our current paradigms into question. This paper acknowledges the popularity that the eco-city has achieved in planning and mainstream discourses on sustainable development and aims to develop an understanding of the phenomenon on the basis of empirical analysis. More specifically, the paper focuses on the nexus between eco-cities and sustainability ideology to show how the latter is understood and applied in the development of new settlements. Using Masdar City as a case study, the three canonic dimensions of sustainability: the economic, the social, and the environmental, are here explored, and their respective weight evaluated. Ultimately, it will be shown how the foundations of the eco-city are strongly grounded in economic concerns and how the social and environmental aspects form only a layer aiming to hide the real nature of the phenomenon.