The Sustainable City Urban Farming (Dubai)
Dubai, United Arab Emirates · Operator: Diamond Developers / The Sustainable City with resident community farming groups
Overview
Urban farming embedded in a purpose-built sustainable community on the edge of desert-city Dubai. Combining biodome greenhouses with resident allotments, it supplies locally grown vegetables despite the hot arid climate while using farming to build community.
Citizen participation
In The Sustainable City, Dubai's first net-zero-energy residential community, each of the five residential clusters has its own urban farm. Residents grow organically in allotments beside their homes and can join community farming groups and a CSA vegetable-box scheme. Eleven biodome greenhouses grow leafy produce hydroponically and aquaponically, and farming has become a focus of neighbourhood social life.
Operating model
Part of the community infrastructure built and run by developer Diamond Developers. The biodomes produce up to a million pots of leafy greens a year, sold to residents and distributed through CSA boxes, while treated greywater from homes irrigates the farms in a circular-resource model.
Impact
Internationally noted—featured by the World Bank and CNN—as a model for integrating urban farming into housing development in the Gulf's desert climate. It has raised residents' food awareness, fostered neighbourly ties, and offers a working example for the region's food-security debate.
Crops
- leafy greens
- herbs
- chives
- chicory
- vegetables
- dates
- figs
Scale
3,000 m² — 11 biodome greenhouses along the community's central green spine plus allotments beside homes; more than 3,000 m² of growing space in a 46-hectare (113-acre) net-zero-energy development
Sources（3）
This entry is compiled from the public sources, official sites and research below.
- ArticleNeighbourhood Watch: Farming grows sense of community at Dubai's Sustainable City (The National) ↗thenationalnews.com
- ArticleDubai's Sustainable City and Sustainable Human project (Food Tank) ↗foodtank.com
- ArticleThe Sustainable City in Dubai: from dream to reality (World Bank Blogs) ↗blogs.worldbank.org
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