No it’s not the car company spelled wrong. It’s a city of 50,000 being build in the Abh Dhabi desert with a carbon footprint of zero. Why would a country with 10% of the worlds oil spend $18 billion on a project like this?

“The answer is simple,” says Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., the developers planning the city. “There are two reasons. Number one, because we can. Number two, because we should. And because this is a logical step and a natural extension for our involvement in the energy markets.” - npr

An interesting idea, I’d love to see an American attempt at something like this (we really are smarter than everyone gives us credit for), but seeing as we can’t even put New Orleans back together, that’s probably not going to happen.

Geoff Manaugh’s BldgBlog is one of those sites about architecture, art and the new urbanism that I love to read, forget about for a while, then come back too after too long of an absence. Some great reads include the recent interview of Canadian tunnel explorer Michael Cook (with amazing photos), Post-residential Venice (which I’ve experienced myself and is truly weird) and an insightful piece on the new Contradiction-filled Green Architecture. Well thought-out and well written.

Rob sent me a the link to the house in Westlake called Soaring Wings (little over the top on the name). I saw the site work for this a couple of years back and was wondering what the deal was - turned out to be pretty amazing.