“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.” – Richard Bach
In September 2007, Abu Dhabi government published “Plan Abu Dhabi 2030: Urban Structure Framework Plan”, a comprehensive plan for the development of the city of Abu Dhabi that will guide planning decisions for the next quarter of a century. Under the directive of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, Ruler of Abu Dhabi an Urban Planning Council (UPC) was created.
His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Chairman of the Executive Council and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, has continued to inspire and lead the efforts as the Chairman of UPC to fulfil the grand design envisaged by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and the ongoing evolution of Abu Dhabi as a global capital city.
Speaking after the release of the plan, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said, “This urban plan provides a strong and comprehensive foundation for the development of the city of Abu Dhabi, in a strategic and coordinated way. It will ensure that future generations will continue to enjoy and be inspired by ongoing access to the desert, sea and natural assets that are integral to our national identity, while building a global capital with its own rich cultural heritage.”
Abu Dhabi has always maintained a unique identity of its own, thanks to visionary leadership of the late Sheikh Zayed – whose love for the nature and environment reached legendary proportions. With Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 and Masdar City, the leadership of Abu Dhabi renewed its commitment to continue on a journey guided by the late Sheikh Zayed’s wisdom.
The exponential growth of the UAE economy has put immense pressure on Abu Dhabi; there is a huge demand for residential and commercial space as never before. Everyone knew that a construction boom in Abu Dhabi is not too far away; what the market was waiting is to hear on how the government wanted to achieve its goals. Given the background of global warming, dark spectre of carbon emissions hanging over our existence, Abu Dhabi’s task was cut out – for a desert city to go green. With ‘green buildings’ becoming a global reality, and with many global standards to chose from, UPC were increasingly worried about fitting square pegs into round holes. There was not a single international green building code available, which was formulated, keeping the unique geographic and weather conditions of the Arabian Desert in mind.
His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as the chairman of UPC, inspired his team to come up with an urban planning code that goes beyond ‘green buildings’ and one that truly embodies the essence of Sustainable Living – embracing the real values of community life. Estidama, which was launched on 28th May 2008, is the result of that forward thinking.
Estidama, which means 'sustainability' in Arabic, is an integrated program to devise guidelines and regulations for sustainable design, operation and maintenance of all types of buildings and communities within the Emirates of Abu Dhabi.
The program has been initiated by a group of government agencies and developers (Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Municipality and Masdar) in alignment with the leadership's vision to transform Abu Dhabi into a sustainable Arab Capital.
It will also help in implementing the overarching principles of Plan 2030 and its recommendations for the future of Abu Dhabi City’s urban development. The Estidama program includes sets of discretionary guidelines and mandatory regulations, which are to be introduced to the market through a smooth and incremental process.
In an exclusive interview with Earthwitness, Dr. Ahmad N. Sadek, Senior Projects Manager, Urban & Regional Planning, UPC, explains how Estidama is going to achieve its goals.
Congratulations on Estidama. How did the journey begin?
For the Abu Dhabi government, the first pre-requisite was to make Abu Dhabi a sustainable Arab capital. The government wanted to stop irrational development and make Abu Dhabi a sustainable city; the vision can be found in Plan 2030 – where sustainability is the central theme.
Over the last year or so, in line with the global concerns on climate change, developers have started to show a keen interest in sustainable buildings. They have been looking around trying to understand and adopt standards for their buildings; developers have been looking at LEED, BREEAM, and Greenstar to build something sustainable.
The government and the developers wanted a standard that reflects the local concerns and conditions; Estidama came into being through an interactive process which involved both the developers and the government. But I have to say; it was His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who with his inspirational leadership motivated the entire UPC team in making Estidama a reality. He wanted us to accelerate the issuing of the design guidelines as soon as possible.
Abu Dhabi has placed sustainability at the very heart of urban planning. Does local culture play a major role in Estidama?
Sustainability is usually explained in terms of the three famous pillars which are the environment, economy and social responsibility. We believe a fourth pillar should be added which is the cultural pillar.
In the wider sense a sustainable community transcends the physical buildings and constructions. We would like to emphasise the importance of providing the ways and means of sustaining all the cultural groups that live here in Abu Dhabi, respect the local heritage and at the same time to look ahead of our time. The cultural dimension is very important to us; we do not want to import a readymade model from elsewhere. We are ready to look around, identify, understand, test, review and use what is good for this place. We are looking for more localised sustainable principles, guidelines, as well as regulations later on. This will not only cover the buildings but also the entire community.
How do you think Estidama is going to evolve?
The idea is for Estidama to be an independent agency – to transform Abu Dhabi into a sustainable city. Estidama has a research group, a monitoring group to monitor the market, a group to draft guidelines, and a group for doing assessments for various types of developments which covers all types of buildings – existing and newly designed buildings.
Estidama is about three fundamental frameworks: the new buildings that means buildings under design and then the operating and maintenance of the building no matter how old they are and then the third and most important framework is the community design. So within those three frameworks we are hoping to issue guidelines, regulations, assessment tools, and provide rating.
Estidama is going to evolve, learn and adjust to fit in the fundamental framework. As a first step, we have issued new building design guidelines. We have already started working on the interim design guidelines, to provide the development review team with some direction, given the development pace Abu Dhabi is witnessing.
We are not sure when exactly the regulations will come into effect because we want to test the reaction of the market – is the market ready to accept the transition from the traditional way of developing buildings to a more sustainable way. So we want to work in a very transparent and interactive way before we transform voluntary guidelines to regulations. We want to make sure that all stakeholders, designers, developers, material suppliers, as well as residents themselves are willing to make this transition with us. The government of Abu Dhabi doesn’t want impose things in the name of sustainability; Estidama is a collective responsibility – everyone has to come together.
Sustainable buildings in the region are more about saving energy and water… For example, are we going to see a gradual phasing out of the incandescent bulb?
We will try through the awareness campaigns with different social groups to convince them of the economic feasibility of shifting to less energy consuming bulbs or any other kitchen tools and all other kinds of things. If something is going to harm the sustainability, UPC or the agency responsible for putting the regulation and enforcing it, will take appropriate measures. We’d rather perceive that the market itself would start making the shift in the right direction.
Power tariff in the UAE is one of the lowest in the world. Working on the tariff policy a little bit might help mitigate some of the wasteful habits. UPC’s objective is to make sure that we are all serving the overall objective, which is to reduce energy consumption.
UPC is not alone on Estidama; the program is done with partnership. I can assure you all government agencies that are concerned with the physical development of Abu Dhabi are partners in the program – to name a few: ADWEA, Department of Transport, Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi municipality etc. In fact, we expect Estidama to cover whole emirate of Abu Dhabi, not only the Abu Dhabi city. So, yes we are all working together, whatever we recommend as the policy, as the guideline, whether it is a voluntary guideline or a regulation, it should be addressed by all.
What are the next steps from here…?
We are going to start some pilot projects with private developers as well as public agencies. For instance public buildings can be refurbished to be more sustainable. We have started to work with some of the major private developers, in which a part of their project is run as a pilot project on both sustainable neighbourhood design as well from a totally sustainable building angle.
We are working on what is known as sustainable utility design standard. We are looking at the way utility corridors are designed; we want to reduce the width of the corridor, lessen the leak of water and leakage of power – we have a good understanding on it now and we are working on it. The sustainable utility design is a massive undertaking, which cannot be done overnight. So, we are working on a pilot project – the new utility sustainable design standard will be applied in the new capital district, which is now under design. The new capital district is to going to take in 300,000 people; the scope is very big.
When we talk about sustainability, are we including affordable housing – which is in real short supply in the country at the moment?
Among the issues that we are going to tackle in the sustainable design guidelines is affordable housing –all the new developments need to provide opportunities of living and working for everybody, irrespective of their social and economic status. Affordable housing is one of the issues we are going to tackle and we are going to provide guidelines as well regulations later on, on how within this programme development project should provide certain percentage of their projects for affordable housing.
What we have now is a very preliminary draft of the guidelines and it explains the community design principles. It covers eight topics for the community – while there 10 topics for the buildings. The eight topics we are going to address in the community design guideline are:
1.Development patterns/ urban form/ land use mix
2.Alternative energy and energy conservation
3.Water conservation
4.Mobility/ Transportation
5.Natural resources, ecology, open space
6.Building design/ form (e.g., building orientation, height control, compatibility, Arab-inspired architecture
7.Balanced, authentic communities (affordable housing, adequate community facilities, gathering places, safety, etc.)
8.Recycling/ solid waste management
We are going to have a Formula One race in Abu Dhabi next year. Massive construction projects are underway already, how do those projects fit into Estidama?
We do not intend to create regulations through Estidama that will prevent or stop current projects which are on at the moment. Our plan is to tailor Estidama guidelines to be plugged in at any level of the project; they can adopt the Estidama principles at any stage – right from the conceptual plan stage to a finished project. Even if the project is complete, it can look at implementing Estidama principles in the form of sustainable landscaping, shading, open spaces and community areas and facilities etc. Estidama principles can be useful in enhancing the sustainability of any project – no matter when it embraces Estidama.
I can assure you, what is going to be mandatory are those guidelines that we believe become a prerequisite. A big part of Estidama guidelines will remain voluntary.
There is a common perception that sustainability comes at a heavy price – that going green is expensive…
That sort of thinking is as always short-sighted. We should not be looking at only one side of sustainability; we should have a comprehensive view of what sustainability means in the long run. We already have an overwhelming verdict in favour of sustainable buildings on many counts – for the residents the buildings are comfortable to live in. For the owners of the building it incurs a less running cost in the long run, low maintenance cost, low water and energy bill – the possibilities of savings are tremendous. Recovery period can be anywhere between three to four years and up to 20 years – it depends on what level of sustainability a developer is trying to achieve. The bottom-line is simple and clear: in the long run sustainable buildings are highly rewarding.
This is one aspect where we want a higher level of awareness, especially amongst developers. It is our endeavour to make private developers our partners in making Estidama succeed. We want them with us on the same boat – selecting the guidelines, in coming to a conclusion on what needs to be mandatory. We intend to achieve this through the select pilot projects – we, as the government, will set the example by proving how feasible sustainable buildings are even from an economic point of view. We are not concerned about the immediate profits made in the first year of a project; we need to look at the bigger picture.
In Estidama we have given 15 points for the indoor environment; the quality of indoor environment is directly proportional to the life and performance of the inhabitants. If the developer is only concerned about the value of the building…, from a market point of view, buildings which incur a low cost of running through sustainable measures always gets a higher value.
The developers in the region may not be happy with the potential gains from a sustainable building. Is the government going to offer some incentives to the developers for embracing Estidama?
The UPC as well as the government of Abu Dhabi, is looking seriously at a set of incentives, which start at the simple level of awarding the development in its design review stage, and also to expedite the time in getting the building license.
UPC truly understands that money and time are very important for the developers; we want to give them incentives which focus on both. We want to expedite their applications to help them save on time, which is very critical. In certain cases we might even give additional GFA (gross floor area), for example, if they provide more open spaces, provide community facilities etc. – we can provide them with utilities, or even additional height for the building…
These incentive structures are open for negotiation. At the moment we are checking on how to go about it, knowing too well that we need to be flexible in achieving our goals. We realise incentives are very important. Our intention is not to impose anything; we want developers to be our partners in making this transition a massive success.
The incentive structure provides a win-win situation for both the government and the developers. When would Estidama be ready with the complete guidelines?
We have organised seven workshops since the launch of Estidama to come out with a guideline as soon as possible. We are working on preparing interim design guidelines, which will be ready in three weeks. We are reviewing the new building design guideline – on upgrading and maintenance, appropriate to the conditions. We are also working on the institutional structure and framework.
By September we’ll have community design guidelines ready. We are hoping to cover the entire scope by October this year. Work is going on in parallel streams, three workshops every week with all stakeholders involved in the projects.
In six months, we will have a set of guidelines to get Estidama started. Considering the unique pace of development in Abu Dhabi, we need to have an innovative and out of the box working system to catch up with. The feedback we have received from developers and consultants is very positive.
The big developers, starting from Masdar, are in full support of Estidama; they are going to test our design guidelines. Aldar is now going to dedicate one of its developments to test the guidelines. We get so many phone calls a day; everyone wants to know when we’ll be ready.
