How muggy city barely uses air conditioning

THE wind ruffled Aun Abdullah's hair as he strolled along a path paved through lush grasses circled by apartments more than 20 stories high.

- ALLYSON CHIU

Large gaps between the towering buildings channeled the winds, providing relief from the muggy heat.

"This breeze you're feeling, you wouldn't feel without the master plan," said Abdullah, who works for the Lodha Group, a prominent real estate developer in India.

Abdullah's company developed the layout of Palava City, a 5000-acre experimental community northeast of Mumbai, to take advantage of India's westerly winds. The breezes keep people cool outdoors so they can walk or bike instead of hopping into polluting cars and buses. The homes don't need as much air conditioning. One study found that the development's maximum temperature is consistently 2 to 3 degrees Celsius cooler than in nearby cities, including Mumbai.

The community, which began construction in 2008 and is being developed in phases, aims to not only slash its planet-warming emissions to zero but also to provide a road map for communities facing the pressures of more extreme weather. As cities around the world grapple with rebuilding after disasters, or meeting the needs of an influx of people, Palava hopes to provide a model for adapting to a climate-transformed world.

"Our testing, we try to focus on resilience and decarbonisation," said Abdullah, Lodha's head of sustainability. "Palava really is a living lab." India, experts say, is an ideal place for piloting a net-zero-energy city, which meets all of its energy needs with renewables. The country of more than 1.4 billion people is one of the world's fastest-growing economies, and its leaders have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070.

Creating and maintaining a sustainable smart city from scratch is complicated. Palava's developers have had much more leeway than typical governments, establishing their own management system to handle functions such as utilities, wastewater treatment and policing.