ABSTRACT
Sustainable City is the 11th goal among the SDGs. In order to foster sustainable lifestyle and sustainable housing in cities, there is a need to provide appropriate Sustainability metrics for consumers and the real estate sector. The chapter aims at identifying issues that determine the efficiency of Sustainability Assessment (SA) tools for buildings such as LEED, BREEAM, and Estidama. A case study on Masdar City has been presented and experts were interviewed to understand the role of SA tools in driving the consumer demand for sustainable projects. The chapter proposed policy recommendations on green building development for the GCC countries. It reveals that mandatory green building certifications such as Estidama play a significant role in driving the people’s awareness and improving the building stock. The chapter also suggests that the new certified energy/water efficient building stock will save the government expenditures due to eventual decrease of the utility bills that have been subsidized.
