Sustainable development involves "improving the quality of life in a city, including ecological, cultural, political, institutional, social and economic components without leaving a burden on the future generations...[that is] the result of a reduced natural capital and an excessive local debt" ("What Is a Sustainable City?," n.d.). In a contemporary city such as Dubai, city officials aspiring to achieve sustainable development face several challenges.
The first challenge is that of rapid growth. The United Arab Emirates has been growing by 5% per year for the last 15 years, and the ensuing construction boom has produced a "huge expansion of urban areas, facilities, and infrastructure" which is expected to double within the next five years (Marashi, 2006). This type of rapid growth threatens to expand the city faster than it can address sustainability unless it takes care to "plan along sustainable lines to reduce [its] negative environmental impacts and natural resource depletion" (Marashi, 2006).
A second challenge arises from the fact that "80 percent of the world's green house gases causing global warming now come from urban areas" (Marashi, 2006). This means that cities such as Dubai need to actively promote practices that result in a cleaner environment lest they become generators of greenhouse gases that will ultimately destroy the city's natural environment.
The third challenge is implicit in urbanization. As cities such as Dubai become larger, it becomes more difficult to keep them sustainable. Urbanization is the conversion of rural areas surrounding the city to urban areas that become part of the growing city. As the city expands, inhabitants migrate away from the city's center to the outlying suburban areas, where they must then commute to work; this pattern of growth increases the necessity for travel and travel-related pollution as well as leading to the decline of the i
...