Will All Cities Be Built Like This One Day?

"With over a third of the world's cranes hard at work building artificial islands, an underwater hotel, and the world's tallest building, biggest mall and most expensive airport, the United Arab Emirates has now turned it attention to building the world's most sustainable city. Masdar City, a $22 billion initiative to build a brand new, zero-emissions city for 50,000 from scratch in Abu Dhabi, got underway last month.

The ambitious project, planned by British firm Foster + Partners, was one of the first ecocity projects to receive widespread coverage in the mainstream press (see the Guardian and BusinessWeek's coverage of the initiative), and is supported by, among others, the World Wildlife Fund. Even George W. Bush has expressed interest in the project.

But can the media hype about Masdar City be true? TreeHugger put together a panel of experts to take a closer look. Here's what they had to say."