io9: abu dhabi

Personalized Podcars Float Over Abu Dhabi

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:30:00 PST

A Jetsons-style transit system is set to roll out around Masdar City - electric, elevated podcars that can carry a few passengers at a time around the city, between several customizable destinations.

Designed by transportation planners at Systematica, the system is called "personal rapid transit," or PRT. The only functioning PRT is in West Virginia, but Systematica hopes to roll our the Abu Dhabi system very soon.

Treehugger has a great interview up with one of the designers of the system, who describes what the experience of riding in one of the pods will be like:

You will swipe a smart card through a machine, and a welcome message will appear. One option is that the system will recognize you and greet you personally: "Good morning, where do you want to go today?" Perhaps the system will remember your usual path, and offer it to you as an option. After you click on your destination, the system will say something like, "Your car is arriving in 2 minutes at platform number 3." You may have to stand on a line, and you will be able to identify your car by its number.
The second option is that you will enter your destination into the system when you are already sitting inside a car.

Initially, the system will be very simple, with only a couple of stations. During this period, the system will function kind of like an elevator – you press a button and go to the third floor. Think of it as a horizontal lift. Later on it will be more sophisticated, and passengers will be able to get within 100 meters of any destination.

The cars will not run on tracks, but will operate within a kind of grid network, and take the shortest paths to get where they need to be. The cars will have wheels, and will be battery powered.

Read more of the interview at Treehugger.

Top image via visulogik.

World's First Zero-Carbon, Zero-Waste City

Lisa Katayama — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:30:38 PDT

Imagine a city built from the ground-up to use recycled materials and eschew carbon emissions. Next year, it may be real. The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi has an ambitious project underway to create the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste city by 2009. They're hoping to build this city in the immediate vicinity of the Institute by transforming research facilities, labs, shops, residential units for employees and students, etc. into a carless, compact, reduce-reuse-recycle heaven.

Here are some of the highlights of this proposed city:
- No cars
- No taxes
- Small streets
- Constant streams of efficiency maximizing data
- Photovoltaic farms
- Transparent laws
- Full intellectual property protection

Sounds awesome, right? Although I'm not sure I'm willing to give up my car just yet. When and if completed, Masdar City will occupy six square kilometers of land near Abu Dhabi's international airport. No word yet on the world's first zero-G city.

The Masdar Initiative main page via Techpin

Abu Dhabi's Shiny New Oceanfront Created via Environmental Computer Modelling

Lisa Katayama — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:44:35 PDT

From the architecture firm that brought you Kazhakstan's alien ship building comes a new design for the Abu Dhabi World Trade Center. Using high-tech environmental computer analysis that takes into consideration the complex climate and topography of Al Raha Beach, Foster + Partners created this bright-but-cool, airy-but-windproof, asymmetrical-but-functional, and very futuristic-looking building.

The secret to making this shiny building work in extreme hot weather is angles. The facade is angled to minimize glare, and the roof is slanted with the winds so that cool air currents can pass through the building.

Construction starts this summer.

Foster + Partners main page via Dezeen