According to the International Energy Agency, cooling now consumes nearly half of peak electricity demand in the Gulf’s major cities, because life retreats indoors for much of the year. We have come to accept this as a fact of the climate. The region’s historic cities knew better: their shaded sikkas, wind towers and woven courtyards made a punishing climate liveable without a watt of power. Some of the most expensive developments with the most expensive materials used, have been among the emptiest I’ve visited due to a lack of well thought out design that caters to the climate.
While close by, narrow shaded streets are still vibrant and bustling with people. Heat did not empty them. Design did. The truest measure of a successful place is not how well it resists the heat, but whether people choose to dwell in it, to spend time there, to let children play outdoors. That is our defining design challenge for GCC programs: to design with the climate so quality of life becomes a constant rather than a seasonal privilege. It is this principle we bring to every masterplan and public realm project: comfort treated as an asset, designed in from the first sketch. With the rise of global extreme weather events from wildfires and droughts to storms and floods, factoring climate into design is no longer a luxury but a necessity.
Recalibrating for a changing climate
Most current design practices still calibrate to historical norms, treating extreme heat as an exception rather than a defining condition. Yet the baseline has moved; average temperatures in the UAE have risen roughly by 1.5°C in recent decades based on reports by the World Bank, summers now regularly approach 50°C inland, and our threshold for comfort is changing. Frameworks must shift with it, embedding a warming region’s realities into the planning process from the onset of a project, so the liveability we promise comes to life in the form of a resilient development that survives the harsh weather extremes.
Environmental planning and design before construction
Environmental performance is largely determined before the first building rises; it is drawn into the geometry of the plan. Street orientation, building heights, alignment to prevailing winds, and the continuity of shade are all low-cost concept-stage decisions that govern comfort for the life of the place. On a recent public realm project in Saudi Arabia, simulating outdoor thermal comfort at concept stage showed exactly where trees and shade structures needed to be positioned to achieve the desired comfort levels without mechanical cooling. The evidence is unambiguous: dense and well-shaded green communities can run several degrees cooler than exposed car-oriented neighborhoods. The strongest strategies are spatial, not mechanical: compact urban grain, deep canopy, green corridors, and continuous shade make walking the natural choice.
Designed for people, not renders
What matters most is how it feels to the people using it. A plaza may read as generous on a plan yet feel hostile at midday, with no reason for people to pause and spend time there. Comfort here is sensed in the depth of a canopy, the cool of a planted edge, and the pattern of shaded paths. The finest public realm is composed as a sequence, pacing shade and rest, bringing softscape and water into the line of movement so the street becomes a place to be, not a distance to cut cross.
Woven, not assembled
Outdoor thermal comfort, water and landscape are too often handled by separate disciplines, each optimizing its part while the whole goes unmanaged. In reality, they form one system, the infrastructure of outdoor comfort. The most resilient places design these flows as one: a continuous fabric of buildings and public realm that shades the street and tempers the heat island; a smart irrigation system that rationalizes water use to sustain a broader green cover; a permeable softscape that absorbs the next storm rather than overloading the network. On a mixed-use masterplan in Dubai, we made the green network the backbone of the development: a shaded spine stitched the neighborhood together, integrating services and soft mobility, while parts of the softscape doubled as a stormwater solution. This holistic approach is a design philosophy for us, brought to every scheme: urban design, landscape, sustainability and engineering at one table from the outset. We treat the public realm as the connective tissue holding these cycles together, the framework the systems are designed around from the start.
Intelligence built in
Technology is the medium through which good design endures, not a substitute for it. Digital tools such as computational fluid dynamics, solar and shading simulations, and generative design enable us to test how a place will feel long before it is built. A digital twin then carries that model into operation, where the same intelligence sustains it: smart-cities solutions track temperature and soil moisture, activate irrigation in response to real-time weather, and flag heat islands before they form. AI-powered analytics close the loop, anticipating stress on planting, balancing water and energy, and renewing assets before they fail.
The future of liveable cities will be decided by this continuous feedback loop binding design to performance. We build these into our projects from day one, when they cost least and deliver most.
Prosperity by design
In the end, our cities will be judged by how fully people can live in them comfortably all year round. The built environment is where that quality of life takes shape in the vibrant streets and shared spaces that decide whether a community occupies a place or belongs to it. Treated as infrastructure, the public realm is among the soundest investments a city can make.
The most ambitious cities now compete on liveability, and those that embody it attract talent and investment and hold their value for generations. That liveability is not a defensive cost but the foundation of prosperity. This is a region we know intimately, its heat and its seasons, its culture and its rhythms, and it has taught us that comfort here is won through design attuned to place. That is the opportunity in front of us: to build human-centric cities that thrive within this climate, not merely endure it.
Hence then, the article about the climate ready city architecture of liveability was published today ( ) and is available on ME CONSTRUCTION NEWS ( United Arab Emirates ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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