FARIS SAEED, CEO OF DIAMOND DEVELOPERS ON WHY HE BUILT THE SUSTAINABLE CITY: Diamond Developers, like many companies of its type, enjoyed high-profile successes at the peak of Dubai’s real estate boom. It was one of the first companies in Dubai to enter the freehold property and real estate development industry when the emirate introduced freehold property ownership in 2002. The financial crisis (of 2008) hit the real estate sector in the region hard, but while other businesses crumbled and dissolved as prices tanked, Diamond’s owners found themselves questioning the very ethics of the industry that they had inhabited so successfully.
Unafraid of initiating a dynamic change in direction when the economic climate dictated it, the company behind The Sustainable City in Dubai, previously a traditional developer, enacted a complete about-face, refocusing its operation squarely on sustainability. At the core of its new vision: an entirely new kind of neighborhood, created in such a way as to be entirely sustainable and achieve net zero carbon emissions. Saeed and his partner spent four years travelling around the world, meeting with preeminent practitioners of sustainable living and leaders in various fields. “We looked at food, energy, water, products or building materials, mobility, and waste. We saw in these elements all the types of emissions and absorptions and the impact on air quality and climate change. We spent several years studying this and building it into the commercial part. We knew if it was too expensive it would defeat the purpose, because unfortunately, people won’t pay a premium for sustainability. So, it had to be equivalent to ‘business as usual’. My partner Wassim Adlouni and I studied the definition of sustainability, seeing what the rest of the world was doing. We managed to understand it in a comprehensive way. Each community we visited focused on one thing – energy, or waste, or farming… most didn’t innovate in the social part or study the commercially sustainable aspect enough. To make a project sustainable you have to combine the three elements – environment, society and economics – together.”