And unlike any other city in the world, Masdar City will have no carbon footprint.
Foster and Partners, an architectural firm based in London, has done the initial design work for Masdar City.
Masdar City sits in the desert about 10 miles outside of Abu Dhabi, a pioneer town for sustainability and urban design.
In addition, Masdar City will be a test bed for new technologies.
"Abu Dhabi wanted to show that it's aware of its carbon footprint today, " says Khaled Awad, the man in charge of building Masdar City.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has signed on to help Abu Dhabi establish the Masdar Institute, an institute devoted to research in renewable energy.
And in a way, many of the benefits of building Masdar City will flow to the West, Ardalan says, because so many Western firms are contributing.
Compared with the Red Balloon Challenge this was much more difficult, says Dr Rahwan, who is now at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates.
The building that houses both the Masdar and International Renewable Energy Agency headquarters will have stores and restaurants in addition to office space, powered by 1, 000sqm of photovoltaic panels.
Haidar Talib, an Emirati travelled the 141km from Masdar City to Al Thiqa Club for Handicapped in Sharjah in 14 hours, 28 seconds on a solar-powered wheelchair.
In July 2010, ADFEC CEO Sultan al-Jaber announced that Masdar City would not be scaled back, but some industry observers believed the initiative would release a revised master plan.
"Our mandate is to look for great minds, talents, technology innovations around the world, " said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the CEO of Masdar, a company owned by the Abu Dhabi government that founded and hosts the conference.
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This gleaming example of sustainable urban living just 17km east of Abu Dhabi is currently more university and business campus than metropolis, but when Masdar City is complete in 2025, it will be home to 40, 000 residents and 50, 000 commuters.
She has also traveled to Abu Dhabi to report on the pre-planned sustainable city Masdar, tasted wine made by robots in California's Napa Valley, explored four space capsules, covered the privatization of space at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and gone behind the bars of San Quentin Prison to see how the institution taught inmates to make mini satellites.
This week at Inhabitat, we were thankful to be able to witness the long-awaited unveiling of the futuristic solar-powered Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, and we also heard the exciting news that scientists are developing a project that could have us using the Sahara desert to supply 50% of the world's energy by 2050.
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