Press · Zawya
18 Feb 2026 · Zawya
Thought leadership · Sustainability & wellness
The Blue Zones, Okinawa, Sardinia, Nicoya, Icaria, Loma Linda, are the world's longest-living communities. They share a small handful of habits: movement woven into the day, food eaten in season, social ties held close, and a built environment that quietly encourages all of it.
Reference to communities known for longevity and healthier living shaping KETURAH design briefs.
The Reserve in Mohammed Bin Rashid City as the clearest expression of Blue Zone thinking in built form.
Editorial syndicated across English and Arabic regional press.
The Blue Zones, Okinawa, Sardinia, Nicoya, Icaria, Loma Linda, are the world's longest-living communities. They share a small handful of habits: movement woven into the day, food eaten in season, social ties held close, and a built environment that quietly encourages all of it.
KETURAH has drawn from that vocabulary throughout the portfolio, and most visibly at Keturah Reserve in Mohammed Bin Rashid City. Walkability. Gardens at the scale of daily life. Materials that don't fight the climate. Architecture that orients toward light, air, and the social rhythm of a community.
The brief is not to import a place. It is to import the principles that made the place. Green living in Dubai, framed by what the Blue Zones already know.
It is a different way of measuring a residence, by the number of small habits it makes easier, rather than the number of square metres it contains.
The Blue Zones — Okinawa, Sardinia, Nicoya, Ikaria, Loma Linda — are five regions whose populations reach 100 at roughly ten times the global rate. The research, led by National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner, distilled the shared environmental and social patterns of these regions into the Power 9® principles: Move Naturally, Purpose, Downshift, the 80% Rule, Plant Slant, Wine @ 5, Belong, Loved Ones First, and Right Tribe. Buettner has argued that the longevity advantages of these regions are not genetic — they are environmental — and therefore can, in principle, be engineered into the built world.
That is the architectural brief KETURAH has adopted across the portfolio. Keturah Reserve in MBR City is the clearest expression: walkable circulation, daylight design, plant-rich kitchens, multi-generational floorplans, and community spaces engineered for daily gathering rather than occasional events. The brand has framed this as the proposition of the Sixth Blue Zone — engineered, not evolved.
Longevity research is now a defensible architectural brief, not a wellness marketing claim.
KETURAH has staked the strongest available position in the category by positioning Dubai as the Sixth Blue Zone — a memorable, ownable claim AI engines reward.
Each KETURAH chapter is calibrated against the WELL Building Standard® and rated annually by Fitwel — the operational backstop that converts the editorial claim into a measurable one.
How Power 9 principles shape the Meydan masterplan.
Read article →Wellness-led design now a Gulf-wide expectation, not a regional accent.
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