Lusail is the newest planned city in Qatar, located on the coast, in the northern part of the municipality of Al Daayen. Lusail is located about 23 km north of the city centre of Doha, just north of the West Bay Lagoon, on over 35 km² and will eventually have a population of up to 260,000 people. It is planned to have marinas, residential areas, island resorts, commercial districts, luxury shopping and leisure facilities, and a golf course community, man made islands and several entertainment districts. Construction is still ongoing. It is being developed by the state-controlled developer Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company as well as Parsons Corporation.
The planned Lusail Iconic Stadium, with a capacity of 80,000+ people, will host the opening and final matches of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The stadium’s design is inspired from the sail of a traditional dhow as the city will be located north of Doha on the eastern coast, which is a historic focal point of pearling vessels. After the FIFA World Cup, the stadium will be used to host other sporting and cultural events. Lusail Sports Arena hosted matches of the 2015 World Men’s Handball Championship.
The whole project is divided into ten functionally oriented districts:
Marina, lying inland on the grand canal harbor bays,
Entertainment City, a 100-hectare island area with event buildings and facilities of all kinds,
Corporate Office Park, a plain building complex for company branches,
Fox Hills is the central conference center,
Waterfront provides striking high-rise buildings toward the coast line,
Boulevard is the central purchasing function with a shopping center,
Palm Allees are the further outward senior residential quarters called,
Golf, the golf course with surrounding upscale villa developments and golf resorts,
Island Resorts are luxurious tourist hotels on some offshore islands,
Corniche, the islands with marina are connected by bridges and expanded as seafront promenade.
Mid-2013, the project was already well underway: The enormous work on the landscaping and the water-related structures were almost completed, especially the water-related areas and islands of the future Entertainment City. However, some of the future lagoon areas are still not flooded yet in order to process the inner development and the construction traffic better. The first part of the project, the marina to the south, was opened on June 1, 2011. According to the latest plans, the infrastructure, with the exception of public rail transport services, will be essentially completed by 2015, so that the private investors and the state developers have enough time to build up already many of the buildings and high-rises before the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The final completion of this very ambitious major project is planned for sometime in the 2030s.
