Oman has unveiled plans for a new smart city outside its capital, Muscat. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the city and will include 20,000 homes, a university, schools, health facilities and mosques. It is due to be built on a largely undeveloped site in Al-Seeb, several kilometres west of Muscat.
The first phase, which runs until 2030, will develop the 5-square-kilometre city centre and six of the development’s 19 planned neighbourhoods. The final stage is not scheduled to be completed until 2045.
Senior associate principal of SOM, Bernhard Rettig, stated that Sultan Haitham City will utilize its “smart infrastructure” to monitor environmental factors like air quality and water management, according to CNN.
“We often think of smart cities as distant visions of the future incorporating technologies that have yet to be invented or fully realised,” Bernhard Rettig said to Dezeen. “However, Sultan Haitham City is a smart city with technologies and sustainable strategies that are deployable today.”
The SOM has designed a master plan to reduce the ecological footprint of the district, according to CNN. The plan includes the installation of solar energy facilities, wastewater recycling systems, electric vehicle infrastructure, and waste-to-energy plants. However, the architects have not specified the exact percentage of power that will be generated by renewable sources. Nevertheless, they have pointed out that Oman aims to produce 30% of its electricity from green sources by 2030.
