BABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates BACK IN 2007, WHEN the government here announced its plan for “the world’s first zero-carbon city” on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, many Westerners dismissed it as a gimmick - a faddish follow-up to neighboring Dubai’s 828-meter-high tower in the desert and archipelago of man-made islands in the shape of palm trees.

The city, called Masdar, would be a perfect square, about a kilometer and a half on each side, raised on a 7-meter-high base to capture desert breezes. Beneath its labyrinth of pedestrian streets, a fleet of driverless electric cars would navigate silently through dimly lit tunnels. The project conjured both a walled medieval fortress and an upgraded version of Tomorrowland at Disney World.

Well, those early assessments turned out to be wrong. By late September, as people began moving into the first section of the project to be completed - a 1.4-hectare zone surrounding a sustainabilityoriented research institute - it was clear that Masdar is something more daring and more noxious.

The place blends high-tech design and ancient construction practices into an intriguing model for a sustainable community, but it also reflects the gated-community mentality that has been spreading like a cancer around the globe. Its utopian purity, and its isolation from the life of the real city next door, are grounded in the belief that the only way to create a truly harmonious community is to cut it off from the world at large.

The city’s designer, Foster & Partners, a firm known for feats of technological wizardry, has worked in an alluring social vision, in which local tradition and the drive toward modernization are no longer in conflict.

Norman Foster, the principal partner, said he began with a meticulous study of old Arab settlements, including the ancient citadel of Aleppo in Syria and the mud-brick apartment towers of Shibam in Yemen, which date from the 16th century. “The point,” he said, “was to go back and understand the fundamentals,” how these communities had been madelivable in a region where the air can feel as hot as 65 degrees Celsius.

Among the findings his office made was that settlements were often built on high ground, not only for defensive reasons but also to take advantage of the stronger winds. Some also used tall, hollow “wind towers” to funnel air down to street level. And the narrowness of the streets - which were almost always at an angle to the sun’s east-west trajectory, to maximize shade - accelerated airflow through the city.

Mr. Foster’s team estimated that by combining such approaches, they could make Masdar feel as much as nearly 50 percent cooler. In so doing, they could more than halve the amount of electricity needed to run the city. Of the power that is used, 90 percent is expected to be solar, and the rest generated by incinerating waste (which produces far less carbon than piling it up in dumps). Masdar is 30 kilometers from downtown Abu Dhabi. You follow a narrow road past an oil refinery and through desolate patches of desert before reaching the blank concrete wall of Masdar and find the city looming overhead. From there a road tunnels through the base to a garage just underneath the city’s edge.

Stepping out of this space into one of the “Personal Rapid Transit” stations brings to mind the sets designed by Harry Lange for “2001: A Space Odyssey.” You are in a large, dark hall facing a row of white, pod-shaped cars lined up in rectangular glass bays. Daylight spills down a rough concrete wall behind them, hinting at the life above.

The first 13 futuristic electric cars of a proposed fleet of hundreds were being tested the day I visited, but as soon as the system is up, within a few weeks, a user will be able to step into a car and choose a destination on an LCD screen. The car will then silently pull into traffic, seeming to drive itself through a network of routes below the city’s raised ground level. There are no cables or rails.

It’s only as people arrive at their destination that they will become aware of the degree to which everything has been engineered for high-function, low-consumption performance.

The station’s elevators have been tucked discreetly out of sight to encourage use of a concrete staircase that corkscrews to the surface. And on reaching the streets - which were pretty breezy the day I visited - the only way to get around is on foot.

The buildings that have gone up so far come in two styles. Laboratories devoted to developing new forms of sustainable energy and affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are housed in big concrete structures that are clad in pillowlike panels of ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene, a super-strong translucent plastic that has become fashionable in contemporary architecture circles for its sleek look and durability. Inside, big open floor slabs are designed for maximum flexibility.

The residential buildings, which for now will mostly house professors, students and their families, use a more traditional architectural vocabulary. An undulating facade of concrete latticework is based on the mashrabiya screens common in the region. The latticework blocks direct sunlight and screens interiors from view, while the curves make for angled views to the outside, so that apartment dwellers never look directly into the windows of facing buildings. Like many Middle Eastern university campuses, the neighborhood is segregated by sex, with women and families living at one end and single men at the other. Each end has a small public plaza, which acts as its social heart.

Mr. Foster’s most radical move was the way he dealt with one of the most vexing urban design challenges of the past century: what to do with the car. Not only did he close Masdar entirely to combustion-engine vehicles, he buried their replacement - his network of electric cars - underneath the city. Traditional cars are stopped at the edges.

Still, one wonders, despite the technical brilliance and the sensitivity to local norms, how Masdar can ever attain the richness and texture of a real city. Eventually, a lightrail system will connect it to Abu Dhabi, and street life will undoubtedly get livelier as the daytime population grows to a projected 90,000. Mr. Foster said the city was intended to house a cross-section of society, from students to service workers. “It is not about social exclusion,” he added.

And yet Masdar seems like the fulfillment of that idea. Ever since the notion that thoughtful planning could improve the lot of humankind died out, sometime in the 1970s, both the megarich and the educated middle classes have increasingly found solace by walling themselves off inside a variety of mini-utopias.

This has involved not only the proliferation of suburban gated communities, but also the transformation of city centers in places like Paris and New York into playgrounds for tourists and the rich. Masdar is the culmination of this trend: a selfsufficient society, lifted on a pedestal and outside the reach of most of the world’s citizens.


PHOTOGRAPHS BY DUNCAN CHARD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Carbon-free Masdar rises squarely from the Abu Dhabi desert to catch cooling breezes. The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.


Angles and curves protect privacy and solar panels supply energy at Abu Dhabi’s new Masdar city.


DUNCAN CHARD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A country built on oil money has invested in a sustainable city. The dome of the library building at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.