Expo City Dubai: Smart city of the future?

What effect does this promotion have on you? The creators of Expo City Dubai encourage us to: "Discover a 15-minute city where you can live, work and play. An innovative business hub integrated with modern residences, cultural spaces, unique leisure facilities, restaurants, and retail outlets. All within a city fully focused on sustainability". It may look and sound wonderful to many. Others will be concerned about the encroaching nature of '15-minutes cities', where movement is essentially constricted under the banner that everything we 'need' is within walking distance. Progress or prison, city or compound? The City, built for the world Expo 2020, aims to be "a hub of thriving communities", and the ad appears to be directed fairly exclusively at young families. Spectacular buildings such as Alif, the Mobility Pavilion and Terra, the Sustainability Pavilion, have been re-purposed for the legacy of sustainable living.

Keywords: Expo City Dubai, 15 minute cities, sustainable urban living, smart cities, smart city Dubai, Saatchi & Saatchi Dubai