Diamond Developers, the company behind Dubai’s Sustainable City, are set to build more eco-friendly communities in the UAE and export those projects to the wider Mena region.

Wassim Adlouni, a board member, said that the success of the development will play a key role in Dubai’s aims to establish itself as one of the most sustainable cities in the world by 2020.

Speaking at the Centre of Excellence for Green Development at the Canadian University of Dubai, he said: “The Sustainable City project will allow people to see an example of how sustainable living benefits residents, communities and businesses, and that it can be repeated all over the region.

“Our ultimate target is to use the successful project here in Dubai as a platform to build other cities here and in other parts of the world, like the rest of the Mena region.”

The Dubai Municipality recently formed a special committee for sustainability to study green initiatives, while the project received support from Dewa, the Government of Dubai Land Department and the RTA, which plans to build an electric shuttle between the community and Emirates Mall.

The construction of the first 100 of 500 townhouses at the site at Dubailand will be completed this year, with all residential buildings and the community centre built by 2015.

The Dh1.1 billion ($299.4 million) community will also include a school, a university, a planetarium, a country club and a community centre with retail and coffee shops.

The community also features a green belt with 20,000 trees and a 5,000 sq ft long water canal, a 600,000 sq ft solar park and water management system that will be recycled 100 per cent of waste water.

“The biggest challenge here and in other countries is that the end users are always looking to re-sell their units and get the benefits for the short term. Our target is to keep the residents for a long time. This will only happen when the community really benefits them and the environment," said Adlouni.

“Building green is very expensive, but we have managed to reduce costs to around those of traditional construction by properly researching different elements in the design - everything from insulation and energy-saving air conditioning units, to the direction of the sun and predominant wind direction,” he added. - TradeArabia News Service