Falah Al Ahbabi
Your Excellencies,
Our Honourable Guests, ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great pleasure and honour for me to be in front of you today, alongside my colleagues, to announce that one of the world’s most prestigious and important urban planning initiatives, Global City, is going to be held in Abu Dhabi in January 2009.
The Global City conference is an annual event of significant importance, gathering hundreds of urban decision makers, from senior officials to planning consultants in one place to discuss crucial issues of effective sustainable development. This will be the first time that the Global City conference has been hosted in the Middle East, and in Abu Dhabi it has found a natural home.
Abu Dhabi has undertaken unique and globally recognized initiatives to support sustainability and effective development. The UAE’s capital is fast emerging as a global city, and the forum will help local and regional urban planners gain a deeper understanding about urban planning issues and solutions.
This is a real vindication of what we are doing in Abu Dhabi and an event which will turn the world’s eyes towards our city. Global City participants from around the world will have a first hand opportunity to learn about Abu Dhabi, our visionary plans for its future, and our world-class urban planning, development and sustainability initiatives.
Our goal is to design a sustainable, world class capital city. I would like to explain in more detail what I mean by that. The most important of those words is ‘sustainable’. Sustainability is enshrined within Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 in its key principles, in its recommendations and in its policies.
This means sustainability in terms of ensuring that the urban growth Abu Dhabi achieves over the next twenty-two years does not exceed projected demand. We need to avoid wasteful growth and focus on planning for long-term value across the Emirate.
It also means sustainability in terms of the respect we show to the environment, and particularly the sensitive coastal and desert ecologies which define our specific surroundings.
Global City Abu Dhabi is going to allow participants from around the world to discuss and share best practice in addressing these sustainability issues, which are so important to us at the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council.
We look forward to sharing experiences and new solutions in this and all other aspects of urban planning and development. Most importantly, we hope to also learn from these renowned experts and receive recommendations for our own urban planning initiatives.
Implementation of Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 is well underway but planning a world class city is an ongoing learning experience and we hope to take valuable lessons from Global City Abu Dhabi, while using our own experiences to educate the international community on Abu Dhabi’s urban planning initiatives.
I am personally very excited about Global City coming to Abu Dhabi and looking forward to further announcements over the coming months. With all of us working together, I am sure we will excel in bringing Global City 2009 to one of the global cities of the future.