Guests: Larry Beasley, Former Chief City Planner, Vancouver, and Michael White, UBC, Vancouver, Canada

Key Takeaways

• Plans alone are not enough. Building a Sustainable City requires work that combines urban design with institution-building, policy-making, and development management systems.
• The strongest approach is not copy-paste importation of successful models, but collaboration that adapts global ideas through local culture.

Summary

1. The mission in Abu Dhabi aimed to reposition the emirate as a global leader in sustainable, livable, and resilient development. That goal was pursued through two parallel moves: first, designing urban plans and district designs; second, building the institutional and policy base needed to implement them.
2. Legacy urban forms, mobility cultures, and social hierarchies evolve more slowly than plans.  They thus, require long-term, adaptive strategies rather than one-time interventions.
3. Key learnings from the process:
   • • Understanding political and operational drivers is more important than technical competence in early planning phases.
     • Imported models fail without cultural translation. Western planning principles (density, mixed-use, walkability) had to be adapted to privacy norms (courtyard housing), social practices (guest hosting, Ramadan dynamics), and settlement patterns.
     • Ecological frameworks should define urban expansion limits before development begins. The desert, coast, mangroves, dunes, and oasis systems were treated as organizing conditions for urban form.
     • Introducing community engagement via adapted local practices led to faster alignment and fewer downstream conflicts.
     • Climate-responsive design must be embedded at all scales.

How can Cities apply these learnings?

1. Create or strengthen a planning authority, delivery unit, or development management system at the same time as the plan. Otherwise, the plan remains aspirational.
2. Cities in hot, cold, wet, or flood-prone environments should make climate the starting point of street and district design.
3. Separate new-build and retrofit strategies. New communities are easier to shape; older downtowns need different tools, more compromise, and more time. Cities should not assume the same tactic works everywhere.

Ideas for future readings

1. Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi: A Canadian-Emirati Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanism – Book by Larry Beasley and Michael White.