Saudi Arabia’s leaders envision The Line, a “giga-project” that will transform the northwest of the kingdom, as a tall, narrow strip of a city more than 105 miles long, crowded with 9 million people, and powered solely by renewable energy.
Newly unveiled architectural concepts depict a futuristic walled city that stretches eastward from the Red Sea over the desert and into a mountain range. The city’s open interior is surrounded on both sides by a mirrored façade.
Information about the monolithic city comes to light
On Monday, more figures and drawings were unveiled, including:
It will only be 200 meters (about 220 yards) broad;
It will surpass the Empire State Building in elevation, rising 500 meters above sea level;
Residents will be able to walk five minutes to run errands;
Roads and automobiles won’t exist;
In 20 minutes, a high-speed train will transport passengers from one end to the other;
The construction will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
According to Saudi estimates, The Line will house 1.5 million people by 2030, and construction has already started. The government’s ambitious Neom development project includes the unusual megacity. Conceptual videos depicting the city’s high walls enclosing trees, gardens, and other plant life, nestling communities among work and recreational structures, were published.
“The designs unveiled today for the city’s vertically layered communities will challenge the traditional flat, horizontal cities and create a model for nature preservation and enhanced human livability,” stated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday.
The structure’s combination of shade, sunlight, and ventilation, according to the designers, will keep the climate perfect all year round. The idea of living in the Saudi desert between enormous walls, however, did not appeal to everyone.
One user replied, “I never seen something more dystopian,” to a Saudi Press Agency video of The Line.
According to an expert, it’s similar to wanting to live on Mars
The concept of building a city from the ground up to solve urban issues is not new. Carlos Felipe Pardo, a senior adviser to the New Urban Mobility Alliance, points out that it has been tried previously, from Masdar City in Abu Dhabi to Malaysia’s Putrajaya and India’s Chandigarh and Brasília.
“This solution is a little bit like wanting to live on Mars because things on Earth are very messy,” Pardo, a Colombian, states in an email to NPR.
Such complex urban plans, even though they began with a blank canvas, have typically “created new urban settings where problems have also arisen,” according to Pardo.
Pardo acknowledges that the strategy can confront some common urban issues head-on, but he claims that it doesn’t assist others who are already dealing with issues in other places.
Pardo is concerned about The Line’s high-tech designs because they seem to disregard people’s need to just walk outside and feel something natural in a city.
“This seems impossible, greatly limited or just plain artificial,” he asserts.
However, Pardo continues, “I’m sure several characteristics of this design could be integrated into existing cities, and it would be great to have a way of doing so.”
Concerns are raised over the future city
Supporters of the project highlight The Line’s zero emissions and lesser environmental impact compared to traditional cities, but detractors point out that as a whole new metropolis is being built in the desert, those idealistic goals will have a cost.
Bin Salman, the leader of Neom, wants to assist the kingdom adapt to climate change and diversify its economy. The public investment fund of the government provides funding for the project.
The extent to which Western nations should support Saudi Arabia and bin Salman, who the United States claims authorized a 2018 operation in Istanbul, Turkey, that resulted in the horrific murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives, is still up for debate.
Additionally, Saudi Arabia has been fighting a brutal proxy war against Iran in Yemen while doing little to rectify its history of violating human rights.
According to the Saudi Gazette, a Neom tourism official recently stated that residents will be referred to as “Neomians” and would be subject to distinct regulations, seemingly in an attempt to allay prospective residents’ worries about living under the kingdom’s stringent laws.
Neom “strongly denied” the proposal when that remark garnered a lot of attention, stating that although the region would be a special economic zone, it would still be a part of the kingdom and “subject to all rules… related to security, defense and border protection.”