Two of the world's most ambitious attempts at green design and construction are breaking ground only weeks apart: new, sustainable cities in Abu Dhabi and in China The first is Abu Dhabi's planned $22-billion Masdar City, to be located near the Emirate's main airport.

Masdar is planned to house 100,000 and scheduled to be complete within 10 years. The second is Dongtan, Shanghai, which will start at 10,000 residents but which Chinese officials forecast will quadruple in size by 2020.

For some skeptical observers, the plans to make these cities virtually carbon-free and energy-neutral are pie-in-the-sky. Masdar may be seen as another attempt at using petrodollars to gild the lily, while Dongtan may be seen as a Potemkin village painted green. But we believe that these efforts have the potential for being valuable both now and in the future.

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First, the efforts in both Abu Dhabi and China have brought together top urban planners and designers and forced them to think about sustainability on a macro scale, rather than just working on a project-by-project basis. Further, they have been placed in a position to do so not in a theoretical environment, but in a real-world scenario with real-world opportunities and constraints. The approaches and decisions by the London-based Foster and Partners team on Masdar and the Dongtan team from Arup Group, London, may provide valuable lessons for other communities to learn as they approach the concept of sustainability.

Beyond the general planning issues, the scale of these projects may provide an impetus for manufacturers to provide new capacity and innovative products to answer the needs of customers with billion-dollar checkbooks. Masdar plans to attract hundreds of firms to help develop low-carbon technologies, and it is working with energy companies to develop a hydrogen-fired powerplant with carbon capture and storage.

The Dongtan group is working with Shanghai's Tongji University to create a knowledge bank on sustainable urban development, and Dongtan organizers plan to help find funding strategies for additional sustainable cities in China. Dongtan may serve as a model of urban design in a nation struggling to balance dramatic industrial growth with environmental protection.

There is a tendency to scoff at grandiose plans. But when big ideas are coupled with the money to fund them and the political will to execute them, they may serve as a magnet for innovation. Masdar and Dongtan have the potential to advance sustainable design beyond what smaller projects can achieve. These projects are worth watching.