Investigating the Effect of Urban Compactness on Energy Efficiency in Recent Urban Communities in UAE

Studying the effect of urban compactness on energy consumption has been the locus of research for many Western researchers since the mid 1990s. In the last few years, the UAE federal and local governments have adopted agendas for energy efficiency in all sectors of development, especially in the building and urban development sectors. As a result, a shift from the conventional sprawl urban form to a more compact urban morphology has been attempted in some recently developed neighbourhoods in the UAE but with no scientific evidence about the effect of these new and more compact urban morphologies on energy efficiency in general, and the high cooling energy demand in specific. In a humble attempt to bridge this gap, this research adopted a comparative method for investigating the effect of urban morphology on energy efficiency through comparing the effect of the conventional sprawl vs. the effect of the recent more compact urban forms on operational and cooling energy demands. The main utilized tool in this comparative investigation was the UMI (Urban Modelling Interface) simulation conducted for Al Dhaher conventionally designed neighbourhood in Al Ain city, representing the conventional sprawl urban form, and Al Ghreiba, a recently developed more compact urban community in Al Ain city as well. The results revealed that the average operational and cooling Energy Use Intensities for Al Ghreiba were higher than those recorded Al Dhaher while the opposite was expected. To justify the results, the effects of increased building density, open space/street grid pattern, and building mass configurations on urban energy consumption, have been studied. It has been evident that simply compacting the urban form to some degree seems not only insufficient in saving operational and cooling energy, but it might also result in higher energy consumption if other influential measures are not appropriately considered.