Modern cities are developing in an assortment of ways as we can see here with respect to the UAE’s cities. This improvement has conveyed with it both bright and gloomy growth. Nowadays, cities consume more energy that produces more CO2 and heat. Therefore, the developers found out a basic strategy to deal with heat and CO2 by building Cool Cities. These cities have the ability to reduce heat and CO2 to the zero level. In my essay I will look at the expected role that modern cities make with respect to climate changes, I will look at how modern cities can minimize their energy consumption and as a result to reduce their carbon emission. Finally, I will state my opinion regarding the practicality of environmentally friendly cities.
Firstly, I will look at how modern cities contribute to global warming. For starters, one notable concern is with regard to the buildings. For example, buildings in the UAE don’t have spaces so they don’t provide any shade as well as poor materials used in construction (Stanton 2). An additional factor to take into consideration is with respect to the transportation. To clarify, the rapid growth of UAE’s population led to increase the numbers of cars used in the country .This increases the energy consumption and also the carbon dioxide being emitted into the air.
Having looked at some contributions, I will now turn our attention to recommended solutions as to how they can reduce the level of energy used and the carbon emissions. One major point is regarding climate control. To illustrate, Mr. Hope stated that sorouh plans to circulate seawater underground to cool the pavement and benches and the exterior of buildings (Hope 2). Mr. Younes stated that using creative architecture will cut the energy consumption by 50-70 % (Stanton 3).Furthermore, they will create abundance of trees and water to prevent the heat island effects, filtered light rooftops which can reduce the impact of sun heat and utilizes natural energy such as wind energy (Cool cities).Another point worthy of mentioning is in terms of reducing the carbon dioxide being emitted by transportation. To clarify, cool cities will use a modern technology of public transportation and encouraging people to use them. Moreover; they will introduce new ways of transporting people from zone to other zones of the city. This will reduce the amount of gases emitted into the air because it will be a car free city. Cool city will use Monorail, Hybrid car, Light rail transit and solar ship for water transportation (Cool cities). One last significant solution for this subject to take note of is in terms of recycling. For instance, plastic bags from supermarkets could save the word by recycling these wastes. Vivian Salama stated that Géat hypermarkets became the first retailer in the UAE to commence deposit payments of 25 files per plastic bags (Salama 3). This fell Consumption of plastic bags at the outlet about 50 per cent in the first few weeks of the scheme.
All in all, cool cities are a very smart idea to reduce carbon emission in the world. However, there are many challenges stop in the face of this project. “Masdar” is making superior plan to make people live in less-polluted cities as a result to reduce global warming. In my opinion I think these solutions are practical to reduce the carbon emission but the UAE or other Middle East countries can’t change easily to other resources.
Works Cited
Cool cities. Prod. SDCJ. 4 May 2009
Hope, Bradley. "Cool ideas to beat the heat." The National NewsPaper [Abu Dhabi] 5 May 2008: 3.
Salama, Vivian. "Building a green dream." The National NewsPaper [Abu Dhabi] 6 May 2008: 4.
Stanton. "Masdar?s green dream is not for all." The National NewsPaper [Abu Dhabi] 25 Apr. 2008: 3.
