While Masdar is making smaller streets and it will be car free, it is a campus/business park; not a genuine City. As such, is it is not a model which is an option for most of the world (who has Billions to spend as they do?) or as a social/economic/ecological network space which is what a city is.
Abu Dhabi, and the rest of the worlds cities, should build within what they have built already, retrofitting and renovating and upgrading what they already have. For example: install solar and wind generators everywhere, grow food everywhere and most importantly increase the connectivity of streets at grade so that trams, pedestrians and bicycles can share the space with slow moving vehicles.
If Abu Dhabi were to invest all those billions into its existing grid of roads and infrastructure all the lessons of the research and new technology will be far more instructive and applicable to China, India, and anywhere which is faced with a highway engineered and automobile-centered way of life.
I believe it will be far better to fix what we have rather than to try to buy a new utopia. However, as MASDAR is to be an campus and business park which is of a much finer detail and deliberate sense of purpose, it will be a great example of what is achievable if we put our resources to work.
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