Cool cities

Since the start of the industrial revolution problems associated with it started to develop like population pressure, traffic congestion, increases in energy consumption and increases in CO2 emissions into the air. At the rate we are going we might need another earth to solve this problem but we all know that is impossible, so we need to at least decrease the amount of carbon dioxide emissions into the air by 50% to continue living on our earth. During the last thirty years Japan’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has increased by 100% while energy efficiency has increased by 37% and oil consumption has decreased by 8%. Ninety percent of carbon dioxide emitted into the air comes from buildings and transportation. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions the idea is to use energy saving construction and counter measures against traffic congestion.
The SPCJ is developing a cool city in the Gulf region. A cool city is an environmentally friendly city that has minimum CO2 emissions. The cool city uses three types of transportation which consist of light rail transit, hybrid cars and water transport. The city consists of three zones: business, commercial and residences. The techniques that the city uses to reduce heat are green belt, water canals and wind power. The two types of buildings used are the eco towers and eco residential and the expected reduction of CO2 emissions are 50% and 30% respectively. Concluding the expected overall percentage reduction of CO2 emissions is to be 60%.

My opinion is that cool cities are a great idea that has to be implemented immediately. The UAE is already starting with an eco friendly city called Masdar and this is a great step in the right direction.