Dubai: Top-ranked in the Middle East, Dubai and Abu Dhabi pushed their way into the 50s in rankings for the most sustainable cities in the world. Zurich was ranked at the top in the annual rankings put out by Arcadis, the specialist project consultancy.

And among financial centres, Dubai turned in a fourth spot behind Singapore, Hong Kong and London. These are based on how conducive a city’s environment is for businesses. Abu Dhabi – itself building quite a deep and substantial platform as a financial centre – ranked 13th in the Arcadis findings on this score.

On the overall sustainability score, Dubai (placed 52) an Abu Dhabi (58) held their own because of regulations and incentives that accompany development activity with a “green” imprint. And the city authorities’ vision statements leave no doubt about that.

“The 2021 Dubai Plan has a clear goal to become the most business-friendly city in the world and this is being supported through continued investment in the city’s infrastructure,” said Ben Khan, Client Development Director at the regional operations of Arcadis.

“In Abu Dhabi, we have the Complete Sustainable Communities initiative that was set up by the Urban Planning Council, which is focused on creating a better-connected, safer and greener city that provides a better quality of life.”

And at the ground level, local authorities are scaling up the requirements projects have to go through to have a green score.

“More developers are signing for the LEED benchmarks in Dubai or the Pearl initiative in Abu Dhabi, even though these are still voluntary,” said Vinod Pillai, General Manager at RM Group, which has interests in both real estate development and contracting. “No longer are these being done for prestige projects.

“As has been the case always, there’s a higher cost element associated with integrating sustainable components into a project. But these can be absorbed via better yields generated over the longer term.”

The rankings for city sustainability were compiled for Arcadis by Centre for Economic and Business Research. The final positions were built on three aspects – the social (people), environmental (planet) and economic (profit). The overall index analysed 32 indicators and was further split into three sub-indices.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi still have hurdles to surmount to push through to higher positions now enjoyed by some of the European cities.

“Energy consumption and carbon emissions do remain high in Dubai and Abu Dhabi - largely due to the climate, volume of development, and the traditional reliance on fossil fuels,” said Khan. “This is an area that both cities are actively looking to address though and it forms a key part of the UAE’s Vision 2021.

“The focus on improving the energy efficiency of buildings through rating systems like Estidama and Al Safat will help, as will planned investment in upgrading the water and transport networks in both cities.”