A resident of The Sustainable City (TSC) in Dubai has vowed to sustain himself fully on food sourced exclusively inside the community for a full year. He aims to create awareness and address issues of food security and social sustainability.
Phil Dunn, a Canadian landscape architect, conceived this project during the time of lockdown restrictions when issues of food security were brought to the fore. He was responsible for the design and construction of the urban landscape in The Sustainable City. He decided to put this landscape to the test for one year to ascertain what it takes to eat produce solely sourced from within his neighborhood urban environment with support from other residents.
There are several simple rules in place for The Sustainable Human Project. Phil will grow fruits and vegetables such as onions, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs in community garden plots. Free-range chickens will provide him with eggs, and he will eat fish from a small fish farm inside one of the community biodomes. The missing elements in the food basket will come from a circular economic philosophy. He will repurpose scrap wood from construction into urban farming tools which will then be used in bartering with residents in exchange for other items such as grains, rice, proteins, and oils.
When he travels or is invited out for dinner, he will use the opportunity to spread the word about the amazing cultural diversity of over 80 different nationalities living in TSC.
“The Sustainable Human Project was conceived as a mixture of a personal challenge and an outward commitment to explore, educate, and engage with the important concepts of food security in the time of a pandemic, and a social sustainability ideal of how growing food together might also “grow” a community. The challenge of 365 days of eating only food grown in The Sustainable City (TSC) was one that I thought was crazy enough to keep me wilfully striving, and just possible enough to perhaps, be completed.”
Phil Dunn
This entire process is monitored by The Chiron Clinic, located in TSC, who completed baseline medical tests before the challenge and will be tracking Phil’s health throughout the year at regular intervals to ensure any nutritional issues are identified and addressed.
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What is The Sustainable City
The Sustainable City in Dubai is the world’s first fully sustainable community, and GCC’s ‘Happiest Community’.
An icon of Dubai, it represents a new era in Real Estate, where social, environmental, and economic facets are perfectly considered and seamlessly blended, to offer harmonious, quality sustainable low carbon living.
Born from a vision to accelerate the transition towards sustainable development, The Sustainable City demonstrates the living, working proof of this future-ready concept and acts as a benchmark for sustainable living.
Located in Dubailand, the mixed-use development spans some 46 hectares and provides an array of green residential facilities and amenities with no negative impact on the environment.
A unique concept that redefines sustainable living; offering energy efficient housing, zero maintenance, and low service fees, green education and health care, and a host of indoor and outdoor leisure and wellness activities, an urban farm, green mosque, and innovation center.
The Sustainable City won over 20 awards including the Gulf Real Estate Award for the ‘Happiest Community’ for three consecutive years. In addition to being voted as the “Overall Winner”, the community also won top honors as the ‘Best Real Estate Project (Master Development)’, ‘Best Real Estate Research’, and ‘Best Real Estate Developer – Sustainable Green Development’ awards at the GREA 2019. It has also received the Emirates Energy Award 2017 for energy efficiency.
