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After what officials described as a “comprehensive” project review, several flashy elements have been dropped from plans for Masdar, the ambitious eco-city under construction in Abu Dhabi.

Created from the ground-up, Masdar is designed as a fully self-contained, zero-carbon city, built around an education and research institution focused on alternative energies. With Foster & Partners as master planners, and financial backing from the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a government-owned company, every aspect of the city was engineered for energy and waster efficiency, incorporating the latest technologies and design techniques, from narrows streets shaded by solar panels to complex systems creating electricity from waste.

After three years of construction, this week executives announced the project was on track, but more than $3 billion has been trimmed from the budget after a 10-month review of the master plan. The cuts were attributed, in part, to a drop in building costs, as well as a slowdown in housing demand.

Real estate industry leaders are talking sustainability and energy efficiency at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Jones Lang LaSalle chief executive Colin Dyer writes in his blog.

Colin Dyer

Dyer, a veteran participant in the annual pow wow of world business leaders, is surprisingly interesting and engaging in the blog, as he recounts his experiences at the conference. He even mentions his client meetings, which breaks several unwritten rules of corporate blogging.

“The general mood of attendees last year was somewhere between ‘controlled fear and cautious pessimism,’” Dyer writes. “So far this time, the mood feels ‘cautiously optimistic.’”