Urban sustainability in the Arabian Gulf: Air conditioning and its alternatives

Abstract

This paper examines shifting approaches to urban sustainability in the Arabian Gulf by focusing on the issue of air conditioning and thermal comfort. It considers the recent foregrounding of tradition and heritage within the arena of mega-project development in Qatar, using the Msheireb Downtown Doha Project as an example of a wider regional trend around urban sustainability. Through its focus on air conditioning, the paper draws on Appadurai's recent critique of design singularity to examine built environment sustainability in relation to the indoor comfort norms and practices, for both bodies and objects, which are now well established across the Gulf region.

A curiosity driven approach to air-conditioning on the Arabian Peninsula: Comparing the accounts of three resident groups in Qatar

“…Nearing completion in downtown Doha, this development is designed to provide a relatively novel mix of homes, offices and recreational spaces and, in doing so, explicitly draws on local architectural traditions of low rise, densely packed buildings in an attempt to create lifestyles which could be both more personally enjoyable and less energy consumptive for the Qataris and expatriate workers who can afford to live there. It does this partly by encouraging people to spend more time in outdoor spaces through the provision of cooling water features, significant shading and other means of managing the experienced thermal environment (for more on how the Msheireb imagines everyday life, see Melhuish et al, 2016, Degen at al., 2017, and Winter, 2016a, 2016b. (Indraganti and Boussaa, 2017, Indraganti et al, 2018.…”

Understanding air-conditioned lives: qualitative insights from Doha

“…Doha is in a region where various physical features mean that global warming is already having particularly strong impacts (Pal & Eltahir 2016), and is a place where a large part of the great per capita carbon footprint is associated with space cooling in buildings (Indraganti & Boussaa 2018). So, have Doha's more affluent residents already become 'locked into' to a fully air-conditioned life indoors (Winter 2016)?…”

“…This appeal was also especially strong in a country where the gas exports made cost of comparatively little concern (Elnaklah et al 2021). Since then there have been various attempts to unsettle the local reliance on air-conditioning through alternative approaches to urban design (Winter 2016). It is also true that environmental concerns are at the heart of Qatar's current 20-year development plan (Al-Thani et al 2019).…”

Leveraging Cloud Services & Digital Transformation for Sustainability: Insights from Cases of Qatar

“…The purpose of this project was to build urban environments with sustainability as the rhetorical agenda, offering design-based solutions for energy consumption. Msheireb Downtown Doha is designed by creating sustainable, innovative, inspiring and eco-friendly spaces (Winter, 2016). While conducting interviews, the respondents of the research were asked a few close-ended questions:…”