The vision
The world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste, car-free city — 50,000 residents inside a Foster + Partners walled medina, moving entirely by driverless Personal Rapid Transit pods.
Context
A $22bn statement from the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company to lead the post-oil economy, with MIT's clean-tech institute as its intellectual core.
What happened
Seventeen years later only ~15% is built and ~5,000 people live there. The zero-carbon target was downgraded to 'low carbon' by 2010, and the PRT system was abandoned after one stop.
Why it fell short
- 2008 financial crisis collapsed the original $22bn budget
- Personal Rapid Transit was impossible to scale beyond a single line
- True zero-carbon proved physically infeasible at city scale
- Repositioned as a real-estate cluster once the moonshot died