Engineering the cities of tomorrow

When systems converge, cities either perform or fall short

Across the Middle East, cities are being built and reshaped at a scale that is changing the global benchmark for urban development. New urban centres are emerging from masterplans, while existing cities are expanding and densifying to accommodate economic diversification, population growth and rising expectations of liveability. Saudi Arabia is advancing one of the largest infrastructure and real estate investment programmes globally, with total project value exceeding US$1.3 trillion and population expected to rise to nearly 38 million by 2030. The UAE continues to position itself as a global convening hub, with sustained investment in urban capacity, mobility, energy and event infrastructure, alongside long-term plans such as Abu Dhabi’s Dh240 billion 2040 Urban Plan, designed to double population capacity while maintaining quality of life. Those ambitions are visible in the skyline, and in the pace of delivery. What is less visible, but far more consequential, is how these cities will function and whether they can operate efficiently under sustained pressure. That depends less on individual assets and more on how effectively the systems that support them are designed to work together. At AtkinsRéalis, this understanding is shaped by working at the earliest stages of city-making, where decisions are still fluid and system interactions are most visible. Across large-scale masterplanning developments, such as Saadiyat Cultural District and New Murabba, as well as progammes in Al Ula, this integrated view becomes tangible early, where cultural, environmental and infrastructure systems are shaped together as part of a single framework.

Cities Only Perform When They Are Designed as Systems

Urban development has historically followed a sequence. Land use was defined first, transport networks were introduced to serve it, and utilities were added to meet demand. Each system was developed with its own objectives, often with limited coordination beyond immediate requirements.

That model assumed systems could be layered. Cities today operate under conditions where systems are tightly interconnected. A clearer way to understand that is to view them as living systems. Urban planning forms the structure, giving shape and direction to the way a city is laid out over time. Transport networks act as arteries and veins, enabling movement and exchange. Energy and utilities function as the heart, powering cooling, water production and daily life. Buildings determine how much energy and water the system needs to sustain itself. And digital infrastructure operates as the nervous system, providing visibility, coordination and real-time response.

Each system breathes life into the others, and into the communities they support. A change in one area has immediate consequences elsewhere. A new residential district increases cooling demand, which raises electricity consumption and affects grid capacity. When one system is overdesigned, under planned or disconnected, the entire organism suffers. The impact is not isolated to infrastructure. It is experienced across how people move, live, work and interact within the city. Under these conditions, planning systems independently introduces inefficiencies that compound over time while planning them together creates the opportunity to manage demand, optimise performance, and build resilience into the foundations of the city.

This dynamic becomes most visible when working across systems simultaneously. Within AtkinsRéalis, Consulting, Strategy and Advisory services act as the point where Transport, Infrastructure, Buildings & Places, along with sustainability, digital and development advisory, intersect, embedded across markets and services. That cross-system and market exposure, ranging from integrated cultural destinations to complex urban developments, provides a perspective that goes beyond individual disciplines and makes system dependencies visible early. This perspective is reinforced by the ability to apply insights across projects and markets. For example, standardised GIS-enabled planning approaches have been deployed across developments alongside reusable modelling frameworks and integrated data environments. This consistency has been shown to reduce study timelines and delivery costs by 10-20%, while improving decision quality across complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

Integration Locked In at the Earliest Decisions

The interaction between systems is determined early in the development process. Decisions made at the planning stage influence how cities will perform for decades. This is also where governments and developers need support to advance ambitious national visions, which set the direction for growth, but the success of which is dependent on how effectively they are translated into coordinated, deliverable systems across transport, infrastructure, and utilities to create environments that function as intended once delivered.

This is particularly evident in large-scale environments such as Soudah Development and New Murabba. When early-stage decisions across land use, infrastructure, mobility and environmental performance are treated as a single system rather than parallel workstreams, integrated system design has enabled capital optimisation typically in the range of 10-20%, alongside more effective alignment of development phasing with infrastructure provision. This extends into execution since delivery discipline is an inherent part of integration.

On complex programmes, procurement strategy, packaging, sequencing and supply chain coordination affect whether integrated designs can be executed as intended. In one infrastructure programme example, an integrated procurement approach delivered 8 to 10% cost savings and reduced procurement cycle timelines by around 20%. Where system dependencies and constraints are addressed early, programmes typically see a reduction in redesign and change during later stages in the range of 10-25%, alongside timeline improvements of 5-15%. These are not back-office wins. They are indicators of whether an integrated plan can be delivered at pace without eroding value.

And this is where advisory capability matters. The value is not in predicting cities with certainty, but in reducing uncertainty by applying system-level insight early enough to influence the shape of the city, not just its parts. Digital tools are increasingly central to this process. Building information modelling, digital twins and advanced analytics allow teams to test how systems interact, assess performance under different scenarios and explore options before construction begins. This strengthens decision-making by improving coordination across disciplines and making system impacts visible earlier in the process. In one Middle East engagement, AtkinsRéalis supported a client to standardise more than 20 BIM Level 2 processes, develop templates and establish a comprehensive BIM execution and digital plan, alongside automation tools. That kind of digital foundation is about creating consistent inputs and repeatable decision-making so system integration can be designed and governed rather than improvised.

Where Systems Meet, Performance Is Decided

In few regions are these pressures more tightly coupled than in the Middle East.

Electricity demand has already tripled across the Middle East and North Africa since 2000 and is projected to rise significantly by 2035, with a large share of this increase driven by cooling and desalination. In Gulf cities, cooling alone can account for a substantial proportion of peak electricity demand. At the same time, the region produces a significant share of the world’s desalinated water, reinforcing the link between water and energy systems since water enables urban expansion and mobility needs intensifying.

These pressures do not operate independently, they reinforce each other. Which is where theory gives way to consequence.
In practice, these constraints actively shape planning decisions. Mobility and urban form are equally interdependent. Investment in major transport networks such as Dubai Metro and Riyadh Metro directly influences where density is viable and how cities expand. Rail corridor studies in Saudi Arabia and urban transport modelling in Dubai indicate that infrastructure alignment is driven by factors like logistics demand, network capacity and connectivity requirements. These systems move people from their homes to their jobs and from leisure to lifestyle necessities, shaping urban structure and economic activity.

In studies using early-stage mobility modelling across the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, scenario testing across demand, operational and financial performance has enabled clients to identify viable corridors, reject sub-optimal options early and prioritise investment with greater confidence. This approach can avoid 15-30% of unnecessary capital spends by refining decisions before commitment and improving overall investment efficiency.
Buildings sit at the centre of both systems. Their design determines energy demand, cooling requirements and water consumption. In high-temperature environments, cooling drives peak electricity demand. Energy supports water production and desalination adds further energy requirements to maintain water supply.

High-performance design reduces these system pressures while digital infrastructure connects them, making performance measurable and trade-offs visible. In one major urban transport programme, aligned digital programme management support delivered a 24% reduction in costs, unlocking close to $1 billion in value.

Results like this are achieved through coordinated system-level decision-making supported by data and delivery expertise.

The Forces That Will Reshape How Cities Thrive

The way cities are planned and delivered is evolving. What is changing is not just scale, but the constraints under which cities will operate. At the same time, there is a growing emphasis on cultural and environmental context. Cities are being designed to reflect local identity, climate and social behaviour, alongside technical performance. This is particularly relevant in the Middle East, where heritage and environment shape how places are experienced and ensuring performance aligns with how people actually live and interact. Financial diversification must also be embedded into how cities are planned and developed. This requires connecting economic strategy to spatial decisions, where land use, infrastructure and place-making are deliberately configured to support priority sectors, attract investment and enable sustained economic resilience. In practice, this ensures that cities are designed to accommodate growth and actively support the economic systems that drive it. Planning, engineering, advisory and digital capabilities need to be brought together within a single framework. Decisions must be informed by data that reflects how systems interact over time, rather than focusing on individual components. Linking demand, cost and phasing scenarios at an early stage enables infrastructure to be sized and sequenced more accurately, potentially driving improvements in investment efficiency of 10-25% and reduced demand-supply mismatches by up to 20%.

Physical innovation must also evolve alongside these systems. Advances in construction methods, materials, modular delivery and climate-responsive design will determine how resilient cities are under future stress. At AtkinsRéalis, this thinking is being applied across projects and markets to help clients translate vision and ambition into coordinated, deliverable systems from the outset. Through its partnership with Dubai Future Solutions - Prototypes for Humanity, the company is working to bridge the gap between emerging research, industry expertise and live project environments, enabling new ideas to be tested, validated and scaled within real urban contexts. This creates a more direct pathway for innovation to move from concept to application, supporting cities to respond to complex challenges around resilience, sustainability and liveability.

Alongside this, AtkinsRéalis continues to invest in advanced digital capability as a core enabler of system-level thinking. Through the integration of geospatial intelligence, data platforms and digital twins, combined with growing use of AI, automation and connected data environments, this allows complex systems to be visualised, tested and understood in far greater detail. These factors influence not just how efficiently infrastructure is delivered, but how well cities adapt to long-term environmental, operational and social demands.

A Defining Moment for Urban Development

Cities in the Middle East are entering a phase where performance will no longer be assumed. It will be tested. The emerging indicators around population growth and density, energy increases and transport demands are interconnected and will continue to influence how cities develop. The question is whether city-making keeps pace with that reality. The cities that succeed will be those where systems work quietly in the background, enabling environments that feel intuitive, resilient and connected. Places where movement is seamless, infrastructure is responsive, and communities are supported without friction. That is where integration proves its value. Ultimately, the success of these systems is measured by the environments they create. Cities are not experienced as individual systems, but as places where people live, move and connect. Integration is not an end in itself; it is what allows communities to thrive, supports economic resilience and ensures that cities function as intended under real-world conditions. The next generation of cities will be defined by how they are experienced, in the everyday moments that shape how people move, connect and return to a place over time. Cities can be more than clusters of individual components and inefficient systems that drain the planet; when designed well, they can save it. Ultimately, the measure of a great city is not how it performs on paper, but how well it works for the people who live in it.

Downloads

View all downloads

Trade releases

View all trade releases