Planning for Sustainability in Non-democratic Polities: The Case of Masdar City

Laurence Crot

Urban Studies, 2013, vol. 50, issue 13, 2809-2825

Abstract: This paper addresses the pursuit of environmental sustainability by an autocratic, neo-patrimonial regime and examines the implications of such a political environment for sustainable initiatives. The city of Abu Dhabi has recently adopted planning schemes aimed at forging a new path towards urban sustainability. Among these, Masdar City—a flagship development portrayed as ‘the world’s first sustainable city’—has become the paragon of Abu Dhabi’s new urban vision. The findings presented here, however, reveal that on-the-ground implementation has so far failed to live up to Masdar’s initial ambitions. To account for these diminished expectations and the prospects for sustainable urbanisation in Abu Dhabi, the author draws on an analytical framework borrowed from the political science literature on neo-patrimonial societies in the Middle East. The analysis suggests that the social contract between Abu Dhabi’s rulers and the local population constitutes a challenging context for the pursuit of environmental sustainability.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098012474697 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:50:y:2013:i:13:p:2809-2825

DOI: 10.1177/0042098012474697

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().