Dubai to get world’s longest agricultural park

A slice of the United Arab Emirates’ longest road has been reimagined as the world’s longest agricultural park.

Designed by Toronto and Dubai based architects, Machou Architects Group, the proposed “Super Park” will sink a portion of the busy Sheikh Zayed Road below ground, making space for 25 kilometres of greenery above. 

Because of this layered design, Dubai Super Park has been described as an “eco-valley”. Upon completion it will cover 350 hectares, or roughly 700 football fields, in a balance of 20 per cent leisure parkland and 80 per cent useful agricultural space. 

The agricultural space will consist of open air farmland as well as a series of climate controlled greenhouses. Produce grown in this space is expected to support a significant portion of local commercial requirements which the architects explain will reduce the environmental footprint of transporting foods in the area. 

The non-productive park land move away from the “heavily planted, high-maintenance designs typically found in the region,” said a spokesperson for Machou Architects Group. 

“We aim to create a blueprint for environmentally sustainable park that embrace local materials and vegetation. This will support building a native ecosystem of plants, birds, insects and cross-pollinating bees.”

The length of the park will also help connect areas of the city that are currently under-utilised. The architects hope that the pedestrian access, ambling parklands and hands on food production will increase a sense of community within the city’s heartland.

“Dubai Super Park stitches the urban fabric back together to reunite the segregated flow of people, nature and energy,” the spokesperson said. 

“The teams believes this will in turn contribute to a higher social connectivity of the urban fabric, and generate more supply leading to a healthier competition and a more stabilised market.”

Dubai Super Park will be constructed in seven phases of approximately 4 kilometres each, divided by the major interchanges that slice the underground highway.

See our latest Greenlister: Energetics