Building Climate-Smart Cities in Oman: Lessons from Oman Climate Week 2026

Original LinkedIn post by Anahita Jafari · 20 September 2026

A very interesting hour moderating “Building Climate Smart Cities: The Future of Sustainable and Green Building” at Oman Climate Week 2026. A super practical discussion with experienced individuals that work in the major layers of the topic.

Hafsa Al balushi gave us a much clearer picture of where Oman currently stands with the new Building Codes, how the different requirements are being introduced, and the expected timeline for implementation.

This is particularly important now as the conversation moves from developing standards to how they will actually be applied in practice.

Hoor Alsiyabi made an important point about the importance of water in assessing sustainable urban development after energy efficiency.

Given Oman's topography and the nature of early development plan, Stormwater runoff, drainage, flood risk, water resources and how development interacts with natural systems all need to be considered from the planning stage.

Haitham Al Dhahri from Muscat Municipality shared some very useful insights into what is already happening on the ground with Muscat’s new smart lighting systems from current status to the future plans and how it has already impacted the energy consumption.

Hisham AL-Amrani from the Oman Net Zero Center brought the national net-zero perspective, particularly around moving from targets towards implementation, energy efficiency and how we actually measure progress.

And Simone Carrarini talked about urban mobility. and how important studying the demand is before design and planning. How people actually move, why they make the choices they make, and what really changes behaviour.

Infrastructure alone does not create sustainable mobility.

My main takeaway from the discussion is that climate-smart cities ultimately depend on connecting all of these pieces and enabling them to work together as one network, rather than as isolated islands.

Thank you to all the panelists for your great participation and inputs, and to Oman Climate Week أسبوع عُمان للمناخ for the invite.

#OmanClimateWeek #Oman2040 #SustainableCities #GreenBuildings #ClimateResilience #EnergyEfficiency #SmartCities #UrbanPlanning #Huskshell

Source and publication notes

• Original post: LinkedIn — Anahita Jafari
• Date: 20 September 2026, inferred from the LinkedIn activity ID timestamp.