Planning a new city makes you carefully consider your values. How will you guide the project sponsor to provide a rich mix of uses that will create a dynamic, sustainable and well-rounded community? How will you plan public and private city spaces to promote vitality and security and endure for generations? Re-positioning a former airport in West Africa is an opportunity to create both a vibrant center for business and tourism and a beautiful, healthy urban home for 160,000 residents.
Our master plan organizes the vast site into identifiable mixed-use neighborhoods to be developed over years. The initial phase is a financial center with a stock exchange and conference facilities – the first in the region – and a downtown resort zone. These would attract international clientele and establish a critical mass of infrastructure, amenities and employment that would support future residential use. Other later phases include a diplomatic zone, and an education zone.
We distinguished the several residential districts from each other by their locations, scale, character and housing types, giving each its own identity within the city. Typical of local customs, the neighborhoods are sized to be walkable. By organizing the them around landscaped public open spaces with adjacent mosques, markets, and schools with libraries and gymnasiums, our master plan creates a sense of community.
