The name “Sustainable City” naturally gave rise to potential tenants, contractors, and authorities being interested in what Diamond Developers meant by the word sustainability, and how it measured the sustainability performance of the development. An initial answer to this question could already be found in the sustainability characteristics that were part of the city’s design, including energy conservation and generation, water recycling, and waste management. However, Saeed and Adlouni felt a need to measure and report on the project’s sustainability characteristics on an ongoing basis. For this purpose, a monitoring room was to be built in a prominent location in the Sustainable City’s center of excellence or in the science center. There would also need to be visible data regarding the sustainability metrics, especially if the city was going to realize its ambition of becoming a living laboratory from which both the company and outside parties could learn.

With global warming becoming an increasing concern, carbon dioxide emissions would be a key element in the measurement of the project’s sustainability performance. Other obvious areas of attention were water, waste, and air quality. However, Saeed and Adlouni saw sustainability as a wider concept than just being “environmentally friendly,” and believed the concept should include social and economic aspects as well. Saeed explained: Social considerations need to include the actions that property developers can take to encourage environmentally-friendly behaviors among residents, such as education and awareness campaigns in order to reduce waste of scarce resources such as energy and water. Social sustainability also includes factors related to the wellbeing of the people living in the community, even though these can be difficult to measure and influence by a property developer.

Saeed also felt that for economic sustainability to be achieved, the community must be economically attractive for all the stakeholders in the project:One question that we are asked time and time again is how much more expensive it is to build sustainably versus more conventional building methods used in Dubai. For the Sustainable City project, the clear answer is that sustainability is not more expensive. Intelligent design and investments in energy- and water-saving technologies pay themselves back quickly. The homes are being sold by the company at no premium to the ordinary market, while residents share in the benefits of solar power generation. Residents also receive a share of the rental income from outlets in the community centre, and therefore have an incentive to support and sustain retailers within the community.

Translating these general ideas of sustainability into a coherent set of measures and targets was a major challenge. There was no clear set of principles or standards that could guide Diamond Developers in its realization of the Sustainable City and in its assessment of its own sustainability performance. In the real estate industry, a number of sustainability indicators and rating schemes were already in existence, many of which were developed by national Green Building Councils. Some rating schemes were strictly national in focus, while others had global ambitions. A widely used sustainability assessment scheme that Diamond Developers considered was the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The LEED system was developed in the United States to give ratings to different types of buildings and to communities through its Neighbourhood Development classification. Each project could obtain a rating of certified, silver, gold, or platinum, depending on the number of points it earned on a wide range of criteria. LEED was actively promoted globally and had been applied in 147 countries.

Although there was no international consensus on how to measure sustainability, the LEED system had established itself as the most widely used sustainability rating scheme in the real estate industry worldwide. In 2013, Diamond Developers started to prepare an application for the LEED Neighbourhood Development rating. However, applying the U.S.-based LEED system to the Sustainable City in Dubai posed a number of challenges.

The United Kingdom’s Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) was the other rating scheme rooted in the origins of one country that had gained widespread international acceptance. Other well-known national schemes included Japan’s Comprehensive Assessment System for Built Environment Efficiency and Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Green Mark Scheme. In the United Arab Emirates, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi had launched the Estidama rating scheme to guide developments. Estidama meant “sustainability” in Arabic and referred to the sustainability initiatives of Abu Dhabi. It included elements of both LEED and BREEAM, but also had several adaptations to suit the environment of Abu Dhabi. In particular, the Estidama system was integrated with the emirate’s regulatory environment and building codes. Consistency with the Abu Dhabi Plan 2030 was one of the evaluation criteria. Although the rating schemes had succeeded in focusing attention on sustainability issues, they had come under intense criticism from a number of players in the industry. A research report by Deutsche Bank’s RREEF Real Estate criticized the existing sustainability measurement systems: The property sector is fixated on earning environmental plaques for good intentions — often at the expense of actually improving sustainability through informed capital planning. A lack of clear standard metrics is a key obstacle. Achieving consensus on simple sustainability metrics would be an important step to refocus the property sector on performance. The failure to reach consensus provides some fleeting benefits by allowing almost everyone to claim some measure of sustainability, albeit with little accountability.

Several aspects of LEED’s assessment methodology had a particular application to the conditions in the United States and less relevance to the desert climate of Dubai. For example, the Sustainable City in Dubai would not earn the full credit of four points for the treatment of stormwater because in a country where it rained only two days per year on average, extensive investment in stormwater treatment provided little environmental benefit. Saeed believed that money was better spent on solar energy or waste recycling. On the other hand, when it came to the use of renewable energy, the number of credits obtained was the same (three) for a development that generated only 20 percent of its own energy through renewable sources onsite and for the Sustainable City that generated virtually all of its energy through solar technology. As a result of this design of the rating scheme, for the project to achieve a Platinum LEED rating, it would need to divert resources away from the generation of renewable energy toward stormwater treatment. In the case of the Sustainable City, such a decision would clearly have an adverse environmental impact.

Similarly, the BREEAM system’s weightings did not reflect the sustainability priorities of the desert climate of Dubai. For instance, rainwater harvesting and flood risk assessment and management accounted for more credit points than a development’s energy strategy. There was also significant weight attached to cycling facilities, even though the weather and urban layout of Dubai were unfavorable for cycling as a means of transport. The leading international sustainability measurement systems consisted of many of these apparent contradictions as a result of their roots in a particular country or region. One potential way forward was for Diamond Developers to work with the LEED representatives in the Middle East to tailor the LEED Neighbourhood Development rating criteria to the conditions of the region. This approach would enable the company to help shape a sustainability measurement system that would combine global recognition and local relevance.

However, Mohammad Ghunaim, an engineer working on the development of sustainability measurements at Diamond Developers, explained that Diamond Developers had additional concerns with respect to LEED and other sustainability rating schemes: Most sustainability rating schemes in the real estate sector are prescriptive in behavior, rather than focusing on sustainable outcomes. For example, LEED credits can be obtained for the provision of bicycle storage on a site or the presence of home insulation. Although bicycle storage and home insulation are useful, for us it is more important to measure the actual impact on the environment of such measures. LEED and similar systems focus on the sustainability parameters of the development of design aspects before it is completed, with little regard for what happens to a project afterward. The Sustainable City and Diamond Developers’ continuing role in it provides a great opportunity to carry out a continuous assessment of the community’s real sustainability performance, even after residents have moved in.

Q1:What are the benefits and concerns of the different approaches that Diamond Developers can use to develop its sustainability indicators (i.e., in-house development versus adaptation and use of existing systems)

Q2：How should Diamond Developers proceed with the development of sustainability indicators? Should it use or adapt an existing system, or develop its own? What are the potential benefits and risks of either approach? How might those risks be mitigated?