SOM Shares Plan for Oman’s New Smart City

Chicago-based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) shared renderings of a new, 100,000-person, 14.8-km² smart city planned by Oman just outside of its capital Muscat exclusively with CNN. To take shape in four phases from 2024-2045, Sultan Haitham City will be “roughly equivalent in size to Beverly Hills,” California, but with nearly three times the population. On the drawing board are 200,000 homes, a university, schools, health facilities and mosques west of Muscat. In line with Oman Vision 2040 that includes reducing the country’s dependance on oil, the development aims to use Internet of Things devices to gather and use data to optimize efficiency. Solar energy, wastewater recycling and waste-to-energy plants are planned, as well as design features aimed at countering temperatures that often exceed 100° F.