A City of the Future Hidden in the Desert

in quiet corner of Abu Dhabi is city that has the potential to change the world mad Star City has been 16 years in the making and is designed to be as energy efficient as possible powered entirely by Renewables with no combustion engine cars at all and there were you thinking that Abu Dhabi was all about oil so what is Mazda City well it's revolutionary project designed to create the city of the future conceived in 2008 development of the city will continue over series of planned phases Mazda city is test bed for urban sustainable science proficiencies in energy water Mobility food Health Tech space and AI unique Green City in the middle of desert its transformed Decades of research visions and ideas into living practical reality for those visions of clean utopian cities are nothing new we've been dreaming about them for years but Mazda city is one of the first to really show us how technology will play fundamental role in shaping the urban Living Spaces of the future walking around these streets there's more to the architecture than just modernism the buildings and spaces have been designed to maximize shade and funnel the air to cool the temperature everything was designed to reduce the energy consumption inside the buildings but also increase the livability and the walkability of your comfort outside so we took inspiration from shabom in Yemen City built 700 years ago and narrow streets buildings that shade each other smaller windows and then on top of that we layered the technology it's 10 degrees cooler right now where we're standing than it would be in downtown Abu Dhabi and that's due to how we block the Sun and let the wind flow in so tell us about the solar because when you first started solar was 40 cents per kilowatt hour yes approximately 40 cents per kilowatt hour and now now we can now produce in Abu Dhabi at less than penny and half per kilowatt hour done at scale at 200 times the size of what we were doing 12 years ago and that's the key isn't it it is Affordable energy and if we if we can transition from polluting dirty fossil fuels to renewable low-carbon sustainable electricity everybody wins everybody wins now there are few steps along the way we still have an intermittency issue yeah the sun doesn't shine at night yeah but you can have batteries to give that flexibility you will have to get to storage to have that flexibility like we've done with the renewable energy itself we need to have that same revolution in terms of battery performance and we need governments around the world to put Stakes on the ground and say we need to be more sustainable around electric vehicles we need to encourage that adoption talking of vehicles tell us about this this program well this is our partner Navia it's the second generation of autonomous vehicles you can actually come to mount our city and try one and you tell it where you want it to go and it drives itself you could jump in front of this and it will stop let's hope mean let's hope noticed that you position yourself boat yes it will stop did notice you position yourself farther away from the vehicle than me it's like okay trust you but not all the way Steve completely but look it would appear at first first flight that autonomous vehicles here are safest houses and at Mazda they have their own personal rapid transport system and this is so good because people don't want to travel on buses when you're talking mass transportation they want small comfortable spaces lot like their cars so this is stroke of real brilliance I'm going to go to the Muhammad bin Zaid University for artificial intelligence another Genius of Mazda city lies underground two kilometer network of tunnels that's already carried 2 million passengers sustainable transport choices like this reduce the need for combustion vehicles on the surface and that means less congestion less smog and cleaner air and the idea of reflecting car with their personal ability apart which we've always dreamed of for years and years and years well here it is carbon free ride this is plush comfortable convenience and infinitely preferable to driving around in frustrated circles looking for parking space so we've arrived unruffled cool no stress transport for London look on and sigh with admiration what I've shown you here just skims the surface there's so much more going on that could make six-part documentary for the enormous challenge of building sustainable City in the Searing heat of the desert well that that is perhaps the greatest achievement of all so look for politicians legislators policy makers who might be watching what would you say that they can learn from your 16 years experience set the standards high and then work with the private sector work with the developers work with the Architects work with the renewable energy companies to hit those standards but set targets and enforce them on sustainable cities that kind of beatific goal that the world has been talking about for years and years and years they are achievable aren't they well we are right here it's it's being achieved as we speak and would say look sustainability is not now system really is not one-time Target with each development that we do each building that we do we get more sustainable the problems that every city faces are being tackled here at nasda with astonishingly successful results this is template for the sustainable city of the future and from where I'm standing it looks very promising indeed