Dubai is a city of world records. It has the largest man-made island, the largest indoor amusement park, the largest building in the world, 163 stories to the top. Now it’s aiming for its most audacious ambition: The booming desert city that a decade ago had the world's largest environmental footprint, wants to become, by the year 2050, the most sustainable city on Earth.

In “The World's Most Improbable Green City,” National Geographic explored how the city is expanding into renewable energy and more sustainable building. We asked Milan-based photographer Luca Locatelli to capture the scale of Dubai and go behind the scenes to show readers its inner workings, such as the water desalinization plant—without that process, Dubai would