Designing the City of the Future and The Pursuit of Happiness

This case study describes the collaboration between Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and the Lodha Group to apply a net-zero energy (NZE) district design framework to Palava City, a large-scale greenfield development near Mumbai, India. The project aims to demonstrate how integrated design across energy, mobility, and water systems can create sustainable, high-density urban environments in emerging markets.

• Palava City is a greenfield development located 40 km from Mumbai, designed to eventually house over 2 million people. The project is being built in three phases: Palava I (completed in 2008 with 19,000 residential units), Palava II (planned for 80,000 units and 7 million square feet of retail/commercial space by 2030), and Palava III (scheduled for completion by 2050 with 40 million square feet of commercial space).
• The project utilizes a net-zero energy (NZE) district approach, which requires that on-site renewable energy generation and on-site energy use balance each other out. RMI posits that using NZE as a guiding principle acts as a 'linchpin' for integrated design, ensuring that energy, mobility, and water systems are optimized together rather than in isolation.
• To reduce building energy use, the design considers passive features such as insulated concrete forms, wing walls for natural ventilation, and clerestory windows for cross ventilation. The implementation of these conservation measures is estimated to result in energy savings of approximately 40 percent compared to average buildings in India.
• Mobility is identified as the largest contributor to the city's energy footprint, projected to account for 64 percent. The strategy to mitigate this includes maximizing nonmotorized transport, enabling electric vehicle use powered by on-site renewables, and co-locating residential and commercial spaces to reduce long-distance commuting.
• The water management strategy focuses on reducing the energy and carbon footprint of water use by treating and reusing 100 percent of greywater and blackwater on-site. Additionally, the city is exploring local water supplies to increase resiliency and using low-impact development to channel storm water into green spaces rather than sewers.
• Master planning for the NZE goal includes specific building orientations and massing. Buildings are ideally oriented east to west to minimize heat gain and glare, and 'solar envelope' zoning is used to optimize solar resources for collection on facades and at ground level.

APA

RMI (2019). Designing the City of the Future and The Pursuit of Happiness. https://rmi.org/resources/designing-the-city-of-the-future-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/

Chicago

RMI. Designing the City of the Future and The Pursuit of Happiness. 2019. https://rmi.org/resources/designing-the-city-of-the-future-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Designing the City of the Future and The Pursuit of Happiness |date=16 September 2019 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/designing-the-city-of-the-future-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2019designing, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Designing the City of the Future and The Pursuit of Happiness}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2019}, month = sep, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/designing-the-city-of-the-future-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }