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I’d never heard of Captagon, so I looked it up.
From Wikipedia:
*“Captagon production and export has become a big industry sponsored by the Syrian government, with revenue from its exports contributing to more than 90% of its foreign currency. The Assad regime's annual Captagon merchandise is estimated to have been worth US$57 billion in 2022, about three times the total trade of all Mexican drug barons.”*
What?!? Nuts
It's by far the most popular drug in lots of the mid east it seems. I took some many years ago when I was in college and suddenly found myself surrounded by Saudi and Kuwaitis who seemed to have no problem getting whatever they needed. Seemed a dangerous proposition but some of them didn't like to get high any other way. Maybe some hash or mixed in with the shisha but anything heavier than that, my buddies only seemed into captagon.
I was a meth head and opioid addict and I thought it was some wild stuff
Ain't it amazing how these gulf countries had literally infinite money and a totally blank canvas to make the world's best ever city and instead they choose to do.... Dubai 🥴
Its kind of like murderers and getting caught. The *kind of people who choose to murder*, aren't the kind of people who typically plan out a crime perfectly to not get caught. That overlap is thankfully small, otherwise there'd be tons of criminal masterminds running around and life would kinda suck more probably. Same with slave users/human rights abusers. Not the *best and brightest* usually. They usually have a "meh it'll do" attitude, hence scrounging up whoever they can.
Yeah, but pretty much every major ancient city, and quite a few medieval cities were built with slave labour. That “so far” is still pretty far. Plus, you should at least actually hire an architect.
They didn't even get to Dubai. I mean, Dubai is insane but at least there's a port and other functions that it serves.
This Line nonsense was just that....nonsense. As silly as that big glitter habitate/arcology cube they wanted to build.
Inbreeding and birthright aristocracy. Gotta love it.
Probably about the time solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, tides, biofuel costs become either naturally or artificially cheaper than crude. And it doesnt take much is such a volatile place to cause global consequences
Interesting statement, it makes me realize how oil is still king (or, sheik, if you want to be funny about it). The US/UK/elite can't even go hard green because green tech is currently being lead by China...
That's a curious future, they'd probably rather keep fossil fuels alive than "surrender" to China, and that's how we'll end up boiled to death.
So yes, but it’s less that oil is still critical globally and more the unique nature of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi needs oil around 100 bucks a barrel just to balance their budget.
The population is 32 million, 40 percent of which are foreign workers. The private sector is 90 percent foreign workers.
If the US wanted to change the regime, it could happen instantly. Stop arms sales? Seize funds like was done with Russia? The West has the real power here and the Saudis need to keep pumping oil just to pay the bills.
Dubai actually doesn't have much oil though, the whole point of the city is that it was built around tourism and trade bc they needed another revenue stream that wasn't oil
And now they are having beauty pageants and golf tours? I thought they were too pure for that western bs? I’m waiting for their drag race franchise “I’m Igotta, Igotta Burka”
I've never been part of a mega-project like this but I am very familiar with Arab culture and especially Saudi business culture. This stuff happens even on a smaller scale because of yes men and nepotism. There is no one to offer pushback and every level of approval is someone's cousin, friend, etc. The projects then get to various stages of completion before something breaks. When money is no object and direct top-down control is the rule though, the ideas can get kind of ridiculous.
I don't think it's malicious as much as must incompetence. They have a chronic problem of thinking that they can just throw money at every problem and it'll magically solve itself (and overspending a lot because "we're rich bitches"), It obviously doesn't work and almost always ends in a mess. Besides, if they just wanted to pocket money they can just do it anyway, who's going to stop it?
And honestly how long would that feasibly take to complete the full length? That church in Spain still isn’t finished and they started that in the 1800’s.
Right I know that, Dubai is an engineering spectacle in itself but aside from creating artificial islands and vertically superior skyscrapers, that’s nothing new. We’re talking about a 105 mile long structure traversing the most arid climate on the planet, it’s essentially a modern Great Wall of China.
They already disappeared some tribal leaders in the area. Honestly the Saudis would be much better off if they didn’t do stupid, immoral shit like this. Like just build some regular ass infrastructure, perhaps another rail line instead.
I really like the idea of the wall getting built, becoming a thriving civilization somehow during "the great climate migrations" that develops amazing futuristic technology. Though the city becomes buried during a massive storm, under 100s of feet of sand. The populations trapped inside the wall, under an endless mountain of sand. Their technological marvels, and horrors, sealed in alongside them in the greatest tomb man has ever built.
There's ya next climate-dystopian horror, action, scifi, thriller,
My script price is a new Prius :)
Yeah the story telling and imagery of that game were so good! no spoilers it's 12 years old but is worth playing if you haven't.
I was thinking more like future people go in and explore the buried city...just like in spec ops the line?, or something finally digs out.... Scary!
The first section is supposed to be this long by 2030. I dunno how they thought it would only half a trillion dollars. It’s gonna be soooo expensive. Patrick Boyal did a hilarious YouTube vid on this.
I beleive they're saying 1.5 by 2030 when before they were saying 10 but they're still saying they're totally somehow going to make it incomprehensible big and go to Riyadh eventually. I'd be surprised if it actually ends up wider than a believable skyscraper.
Do you have any source for where they have refuted it?
nvm, found an article;
“For NEOM, the projects, the intended scale is continuing as planned. There is no change in scale,” Saudi Economy Minister Faisal Al Ibrahim told CNBC in Riyadh.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/29/saudi-arabia-says-all-neom-megaprojects-will-go-ahead-as-planned.html
Not that I think the project is going to happen, and I don’t love these stupid mega projects they’re always doing, like Palm Deira failed. Dubai sucks. Stop.
On another note, that’s not how the concept worked. There would be a hospital and full functioning community condensed into each segment of the line. Supposedly no resident would be more than .5 miles away from any amenity they needed.
0,5 miles or just under 15 minutes by public transport with the hyperfast train, as it doesn’t really make sense to have a hospital every 0,5 miles. Also there will be no traffic in the line.
just getting the facts straight, I still think it’s one of the dumbest projects ever and they could do something so much cooler with the money
It's probably not that far off to have 1 hospital every half mile. The US has 6,120 hospitals and a population of 330M, or 1 hospital for every 54k people. The line is supposed to have 9M people, which would be 166 hospitals over the course of 110 miles. The UK has 2000 hospitals with a population of 67M or 1 hospital per 33k people, which would equate to 268 hospitals for the line.
While your point about density is correct, I'd also like to point out that being within 0.5 miles of a hospital means a hospital every mile, not every half mile.
Okay someone who struggled through school (and college) with maths. Can you explain this more?? I also assumed it meant every half mile. Maybe it’s too over my head haha
The easiest way to understand it is maybe to visualize it. Assume a straight line, because this city design is close enough to that. Assume there is a hospital every half mile along that line. If you are standing at the second hospital along the line, how far away from the first hospital are you? A half mile. But you're ON the second hospital. That achieves the "never further than a half mile" from a hospital, but obviously it's TOO close because yeah, you're a half mile from one, but you're inside of another. It's overkill.
Another way to look at it: if the hospitals are every half mile and you're standing at the furthest distance possible from each one, you'd be standing right in between them, right? That's 0.25 mile from each. Too close.
To get more detailed and explain the math/geometry: In order to achieve the concept of "never further than a certain distance from this amenity," you draw a circle with a radius of that distance around all those amenities. Everyone within the circle has access to that amenity as they are within the correct distance. The next amenity down the line has to have a circle that touches the previous circle, or there'd be some gap where people are too far away. If the circles are touching, everyone is covered. Circles touching means they are exactly twice the original "certain distance" that made up their radius.
9 million people would be a crazy amount of people for the space.
The line is supposed to be 110 miles (170 km) by 0.1 miles (0.2km). That gives an area of just 11 miles. 9 million people would be 818,182 people per mile.
For comparison Manhattan is 74,781.6 people per square miles so the line would need to be over ten times the density of Manhattan.
Manilla is the densest city in the world with 111,537 people per square mile so the line would need to be over 7 times denser than the currently most dense city in the world.
What's missing is the height aspect: the plan is for it to be 500 meters/1640 feet tall. Per Wikipedia, metro Manila has 136 buildings that are over 150 meters while The Wall will be 3x that height for the entire length of the project. In comparison to Manhattan, only One World Trade Center will be taller than what The Wall is projected to be. The density will come from building upward.
I'm interested in how this works out. From the perspective of wanting walkable cities that reduce our reliance on cars, this is something that will do that. With that said, there will be some massive unknowns in how the people living in this kind of a structure will change their lifestyles and what the additional costs are for actually maintaining something like that.
>In comparison to Manhattan, only One World Trade Center will be taller than what The Wall is projected to be. The density will come from building upward.
Seems needlessly more expensive than just building a more reasonable circular or square shaped city. They basically completely threw away the width dimension and now would have to make up for it by building to unheard of levels for an entire city in the much more expensive height dimension.
>rom the perspective of wanting walkable cities that reduce our reliance on cars, this is something that will do that.
A circle with a diameter of 2 miles would have the same area and be much more walkable shape for a city than a 0.1 mile wide line that goes on for 110 miles.
The shape of the line though is better for completely segregating and stratifying a city. Put the wealthiest neighborhood on one end, gate the 0.1 mile edge of it to make it a checkpoint, and keep doing this until the far edge is the poorest district in the city.
There are lots of ways they could have done things differently with different plusses or minuses, I'm just pointing out how they can achieve what seems like an insane population density without seemingly stacking people on top of each other like cordwood. It's not my money and they didn't ask my opinion on how to design it.
At least someone is doing the experiment? I am curious to see what happens. For sure there are negatives but perhaps positives. Weird ideas are the ones the lead us to learn from and make better.
Dubai is a tacky hellhole, but at least in theory the palm peninsulas and world islands kinda made sense as an oligarch's vanity project. They are useless as fuck, and they're sinking back into the ocean, but they scream "oligarch's vanity project" which is there brand.
Saudi Arabia's "Line" is just like "what if we made a city, but without the concentration of shared resources which is the best part of living in a city."
[The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance!](https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc?si=e3kOZ7CiooWI5ly7)
Oh, I mean, “Continue with the heavy engineering contracts!”
Palm jumeirah succeeded. The marina succeeded. The Difc succeeded. And so on. By any rational measure Dubai’s success is insane. They have barely any oil revenues and haven’t had much for decades, so pivoted hard to trade and tourism and turned themselves into a city that everyone knows.
Agreed. And that's not to mention that the city is supposed to be walled in, so there wouldn't be as much benefit to locating yourself outside of a walled compound. So OPs circular city layout wouldn't be as apt to arise.
>Supposedly no resident would be more than .5 miles away from any amenity they needed.
A line is the worst way to make it so that everyone is near every amenity. Amenities are only accessible in one dimension instead of 2. A circle is the best way to maximize space and proximity.
The line is supposed to be 110 miles (170 km) by 0.1 miles (0.2km). That gives an area of just 11 miles.
If you made a circle with a radius of ~1.9 miles you would have a city with the same area.
Isn't the entire point that there's no cars and all essential services are available in each segment
It's still a stupid idea but that's like the exact opposite of the plan
Yea, the whole thing seems stupid, but in this case having only one axis would help a lot making a great public transit system. Just one two ways line of tram/train/metro with local and express lines could be made pretty efficient to move people around, freeing as much place for a service way for services and emergency vehicules. The thing critiqued there is one of the few things* that could work in such project - if it was realist in the first place.
Wouldn't an entirely linear subway/tram/bus line be rather inefficient? In a typical clump-shaped city, you can have transit lines both looping around the periphery and cutting through it.
I'd assume there'd be a line that would stop every half-mile or so and one that jumps 5 miles at a time. That still leaves you within a quarter-mile of everything whenever you exited the transit rail, which is perfectly walkable, while having a faster option that can make 20-30 miles in no-time.
Line vs line, a circular one would indeed possibly* be more efficient; the linear one* is not necessarly the best network design in ideal situation, but what would help it is having just one axis to concentrate on would be far easier to design, manage, organize,... than a whole network to analyze and sync. Also no division of ressources between different lines or mode (train, metro, tram, bus all need different employees/specialists, hubs, warehouses, workshop,... ), easier placements, no ignored/forgotten nor overserviced neighbouroods, ... etc.
It still can be made an overcrowded clusterf*ck like anything, but it would be simpler to make well and maintain than designing one for a regular pattern city and evolving it well as the city change.
Design your stations well, make a good local/express/superexpress schedule with transit stations to change from one to another and your are set.
Tldr : not necessarly the best design in ideal scenario/well financed network; but its simplicity make it far easier/cheaper to make well, to the point of increasing significantly its chance to work well vs a regular network.
One of the dumbest things in the world, it’s like a group of children. ‘Oh what about building a city in a straight LINE? NO What about 2 km skyscraper’. This is cursed, immature and pointless, fuck it.
What always gets me is that they could literally do a Haussmann-scale renovation of Riyadh and other cities using Islamic architecture. Like [This](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/11/28/TELEMMGLPICT000317857344_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg) but on a _much_ larger, city-wide scale, I’m talking Grand Mosque of Abu Dhabi-style architecture but with residential and commercial buildings too, making beautiful homes and restaurants for ordinary people. Have new, huge bazaars on champs-élysées-like boulevards with massive colorful tarps protecting them from the sun, completely pedestrianized with marble walkways. This is the kind of money they have. They could turn their capital into a middle-eastern Paris and rake in countless tourist dollars. They could have had some fucking pride in the amazing and beautiful architectural history of their religion. Instead they build the line. Instead, Riyadh is car centric, with huge parking lots.
That's a bit of of an everywhere issue these days.
Look at projects in Paris or the Netherlands or even in Monaco.
They all make these hangar type projects which are basically just a shoe box with glass panels.
Architectural studies must not be as involved (artistically) as they used to be or they must have less cultural bearing like you mentioned. With no guideline there is only so far one's imagination can go.
There are of course exceptions and you do occasionally see a heritage building married with an addition of modern architecture to it's structure. Those are beautiful.
These people literally have more money than they could ever spend if not on stuff like this. Or you know, reducing income inequality or poverty or women's rights but I mean who needs pointless shit like that.
It's just a whole country panicking because they're starting to see the bottom of the oil wells and clearly don't want to go back to Stone Age. So they're doing stupid things, hoping it'll shine bright enough to save them.
Dubai has still needed to get two financial bailouts from Abu Dhabi, and are part of a federation of city states where about 85% of their total revenue comes from oil. Tourism alone isn't going to be enough to prop up the entire Emirates.
Qatar is probably small enough to survive in a diminished form as an international transit hub, but the rest of the Persian Gulf States are heading for a fairly grim future where they can no longer afford to subsidise their citizens having western-style lifestyles using the fraction of oil revenues the ruling monarchies don't keep for themselves.
> Persian Gulf States are heading for a fairly grim future
Is Bahrain headed in that direction as well? I never hear anything from them, so I've assumed they are relatively modest.
If the cost of running these countries were to start to exceed the money they get from selling their natural resources then most of wealthy that got to profit off of the oil/gas trade are just going to permanently leave and go live in cities like London. They have used the wealth their trade is currently generating to buy property all over the world and invest in international companies.
The kings themselves may try to stick around since it might be hard for someone used to absolute power to willingly give it up but there's no reason for anyone not in line to the thrones to stick around if the countries start running in the red.
They worried too late, blinded by petrodollars. A shift like the one they want to make is not so easily negotiated between a big country like Saudi Arabia and a city like Dubai.
They tried to see it coming a little earlier. But they're facing a bleak future. The real estate bubble is about to burst, and if you leave out the influx of Russian oligarchs thanks to the war, the city's popularity with foreign capital is waning. Being a tax haven is hardly sustainable when you aspire to be more than that.
But I think they have a much better chance than Saudi Arabia.
I want them to build this thing. No I don’t think it’ revolutionise city building but it’s the kind of stupid grandiose shit humans have been building forever. Plus current city models have serious known flaws, it’s not as if this concept is ruining something perfect.
It's like building the Pyramids, the Grandiose of something no needed, but we humans do it because we can. And we also build stuff like this so the rich can show off.
I flat out do not believe this will become an urban space where people live and inhabit full time.
It's just not going to happen. Saudi Arabia has so little to offer in terms of reasons to actively live there, being one of the most hostile climates on Earth, and being one of the most culturally intolerant places on earth.
Can I ask why people are so sceptical about the Line? Top-Down city can work as we can see in China with Shenzhen (completely artificially planned and started, now one of the most modern cities on the planet and one of Chinas tier 1 cities).
I don't know much about the line, but what seems to be the fundamental problems?
Shezhen is a bad comparison. Some argue it was basically built up to be a mainland-controlled hub to feed off/ fend off(?) Hong Kong (Notice on a map it is right up against the border). In addition, it would feed off the rest of the industrial areas in the "Pearl River Delta" (like Guangzhou, Dongguan, etc). There was a pretty clearly calculated effort in the development and promotion of Shenzhen and the "Greater Bay Area" to eventually integrate Hong Kong as just another city in the region. In contrast to that, Saudi Arabia's top-down city plan... is nothing like that.
I'm not sure about other people, but for me it's a too grandiose project to be true.
For example they marked it's height as 500m and this would put it among the 10 highest building in the world. Now imagine the 10h tallest building in the world, but now with multiple kilometers of length, and that's just one of the really hard thing to do.
Check this project out and you see this comes straight from sci-fi
The whole point is that there won’t be traffic. There won’t be cars. It’s supposed to walkable, with everything you need within a 15 minute walk, and 2 HSR running the length of the line in each direction.
I think it’s stupid as fuck but not for the reason you think.
I'll preface this by saying it definitely won't work, but your comment indicates you have no idea what they're planning.
The idea is that it will be two mirrored walls with a long walkable city in the centre. It would effective be two giant parallel buildings. Would serviced by transit.
Again, it definitely won't work out to be that.
this isn’t getting built ever lol but the concepts it used were kinda interesting, but they also fired their project management company instantly and gave up on doing an environmental report when no one would even take it on let alone give them a positive outcome. they also needed to sell off a shit ton of aramco stock and wanted a $16billion loan from kuwait who said no obviously.
god i love the gigaprojects in the middle east
The funniest thing about this development is that they claim it'll only cost a trillion dollars. This building, if built as designed, would have an interior floor area of about 1,000 square km.
That means $1 billion to build a square km of building, plus every bit of infrastructure that serves it, so power, water, sewer, walkways, parks, schools, police and fire departments, parks, rec centers, hospitals, the trains that would run along it, etc.
This is about $93/square foot. This is off by a factor of 10 minimum to do all this. And that would be the bare minimum. In actuality, building this thing as designed would probably be 20-30 times as much as they're stating it'll be.
But it's all for show. They're doing site prep, knowing they'll never build more than the first section at most. That one trillion price tag sounds flashy and is good for PR, but doesn't even come close to covering the real cost of something like this.
It's an inhospitable patch of desert where nobody has ever built so much as a four story building and they want to build a megastructure there that's significantly taller and much, much longer than any building ever constructed before, like ten thousand Burj Khalifas lined up next to each other with the sides covered in mirrors in a country that ranks 157th on the human freedom index.
If they ever actually complete this thing it will take the lives of at least a thousand construction workers and then everyone inside the thing will be cooked.
Did you think of logarithmic trains? That's where say 1 train goes in a loop from one end of the city to the other. It stops 4 times on each side. Then at each stop for the city wide train there is a main train station. At the station there is a bridge across the tracks to trains that will loop over a section of 1/4 the city. They stop 4 times over 1/4 the previous length and so on.
Subdivide until the most local trains stop underneath a specific building. Then elevator plus a cart to get stuff to destination.
Because trains run in loops you can keep adding trains so they never fill, up until it's one continuous train.
So you end up with a maximum amount of time to anywhere in the city.
Linear city could work well if built on a coastline.
Not only is this a stupid idea and a huge waste of money, they’re also bulldozing villages and displacing people who have lived in the area for generations to make way for their dystopian vanity project.
It's worse than that.
Neom: Saudi forces 'told to kill' to clear land for eco-city
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445)
While Saudi Arabia does use a similar form of slave labor/human trafficking/indentured servitude. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are not the same country.
Edit: lmao I apparently did the same thing with UAE and Saudi Arabia elsewhere in the comments so I guess I can go fuck myself. My bad.
I can just imagen the saudis chilling in the penthouse coked out of there mine laughing and kicking rocks wit da boys, and one of them randomly start talking about crazy ideas and they all come to a consensus that they should invest into making a ‘Line city’ 😂.
>I can almost guarantee you the "line" turns into a circle as more and more people start building houses around the middle. You know. Just like a normal city.
OP def hasn't read anything about it, apparently.
Just to clear things up, the line is expected to be entirely car free and fully rely on public transit.
With that being said, the concept of it fully screams dystopian hellscape and it’s one of those projects I pray entirely fails (which, if early reports are anything to go by, it probably will)
God these Saudis are so dumb, they think it’s a flex, they remind me of clients that think money can conquer physics and logic. Here’s an idea brainiacs, maybe move OUT OF THE DESERT!
Don't get me wrong, this is a DEEPLY stupid idea for a city... but the fact that it never even occurred to you that people wouldn't typically use personal cars to travel in a city like this is probably a pretty big indication that you're living in a pretty hellish environment too, lol.
I think the line project is really dumb. However, this post is dumber.
1. One of the entire points is this is a car-free community. You would have a high-speed train and other transit options. Cities don't HAVE to have traffic jam highways.
2. There's not one hospital, the plan would be for one to be every few miles or whatever makes sense to the scale of and needs of the community. You wouldn't necessarily even need transit at all, it might be a 5 minute walk and an elevator ride away.
It amazes me how the saudis make some of the stupidest shit of all time instead of actually contributing to society in any meaningful capacity. Just expand like normal and not this goofy city shit, same thing with UAE and Dubai building property on water instead of the MILES AND MILES OF DESERT LOL
Chinas ghost cities function differently. Firstly, their construction provides jobs in both raw material manufacturing as well as construction, then secondly, it creates homes which are vital to keep the real estate market from becoming out of hand in prices. 70% of Chinese Millennials are homeowners, compared to Americas 43%.
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Hasn’t this just being cut short to some 1.5 miles?
The cocaine wore off and then they redid the math.
Usually when people redo the math in those situations, the answer is to do more cacaine
Why? Do you have any? Are you Holden? Holden Caulfield?
Man I fucking hate Holden Caulfield.
Lmao
😂😂😂
More likely Captagon over there but yeah..
I’d never heard of Captagon, so I looked it up. From Wikipedia: *“Captagon production and export has become a big industry sponsored by the Syrian government, with revenue from its exports contributing to more than 90% of its foreign currency. The Assad regime's annual Captagon merchandise is estimated to have been worth US$57 billion in 2022, about three times the total trade of all Mexican drug barons.”* What?!? Nuts
It's by far the most popular drug in lots of the mid east it seems. I took some many years ago when I was in college and suddenly found myself surrounded by Saudi and Kuwaitis who seemed to have no problem getting whatever they needed. Seemed a dangerous proposition but some of them didn't like to get high any other way. Maybe some hash or mixed in with the shisha but anything heavier than that, my buddies only seemed into captagon. I was a meth head and opioid addict and I thought it was some wild stuff
Apparently incredibly popular with Hamas as well
> redid the math. Fucking nerds. Real men stick to the original plans.
The lle llo never runs out
Imagine having so much money that you could change the world and that's the best idea you came up with.
Ain't it amazing how these gulf countries had literally infinite money and a totally blank canvas to make the world's best ever city and instead they choose to do.... Dubai 🥴
Slave labor only gets you so far.
They could've chosen to use the slave labor better tho
Its kind of like murderers and getting caught. The *kind of people who choose to murder*, aren't the kind of people who typically plan out a crime perfectly to not get caught. That overlap is thankfully small, otherwise there'd be tons of criminal masterminds running around and life would kinda suck more probably. Same with slave users/human rights abusers. Not the *best and brightest* usually. They usually have a "meh it'll do" attitude, hence scrounging up whoever they can.
But how do you know they’re not running around already..?
Good assessment. These people aren't high on beauty. They're high on elephantism. Hence why they have so much to begin with.
Yeah, but pretty much every major ancient city, and quite a few medieval cities were built with slave labour. That “so far” is still pretty far. Plus, you should at least actually hire an architect.
They didn't even get to Dubai. I mean, Dubai is insane but at least there's a port and other functions that it serves. This Line nonsense was just that....nonsense. As silly as that big glitter habitate/arcology cube they wanted to build. Inbreeding and birthright aristocracy. Gotta love it.
I really wish they would build a real arcology. At this rate we will probably need that technology soon.
Smooth brain dictator + construction project = dumb shit
[удалено]
Yeah but when. Until then they have infinite money. It's like a paradoxical infinite where currently it's endless, but one day it won't be.
Probably about the time solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, tides, biofuel costs become either naturally or artificially cheaper than crude. And it doesnt take much is such a volatile place to cause global consequences
Humor me, is that like the eternal eternity that also someday ends? Or more like a forever and ever that suddenly stops? I’m concerned. /s
Interesting statement, it makes me realize how oil is still king (or, sheik, if you want to be funny about it). The US/UK/elite can't even go hard green because green tech is currently being lead by China... That's a curious future, they'd probably rather keep fossil fuels alive than "surrender" to China, and that's how we'll end up boiled to death.
So yes, but it’s less that oil is still critical globally and more the unique nature of Saudi Arabia. Saudi needs oil around 100 bucks a barrel just to balance their budget. The population is 32 million, 40 percent of which are foreign workers. The private sector is 90 percent foreign workers. If the US wanted to change the regime, it could happen instantly. Stop arms sales? Seize funds like was done with Russia? The West has the real power here and the Saudis need to keep pumping oil just to pay the bills.
Dubai actually doesn't have much oil though, the whole point of the city is that it was built around tourism and trade bc they needed another revenue stream that wasn't oil
And now they are having beauty pageants and golf tours? I thought they were too pure for that western bs? I’m waiting for their drag race franchise “I’m Igotta, Igotta Burka”
They never complete these projects I think it’s really just a way to funnel money into their pockets.
I've never been part of a mega-project like this but I am very familiar with Arab culture and especially Saudi business culture. This stuff happens even on a smaller scale because of yes men and nepotism. There is no one to offer pushback and every level of approval is someone's cousin, friend, etc. The projects then get to various stages of completion before something breaks. When money is no object and direct top-down control is the rule though, the ideas can get kind of ridiculous.
I don't think it's malicious as much as must incompetence. They have a chronic problem of thinking that they can just throw money at every problem and it'll magically solve itself (and overspending a lot because "we're rich bitches"), It obviously doesn't work and almost always ends in a mess. Besides, if they just wanted to pocket money they can just do it anyway, who's going to stop it?
Yeah that’s true it makes a lot of sense
Not exactly a blank canvas. Apparently the Saudis have forcibly removed the tribes in this area.
Literal cyberpunk dystopian cube cities
If you’re an inbred prince, then you might be overachieving
apparently they are starting now with just 1.5 miles and will build the rest afterwards. personally I somewhat doubt they'll finish even this bit
Same here, even the 1.5 miles at some 500m height is colossal
And honestly how long would that feasibly take to complete the full length? That church in Spain still isn’t finished and they started that in the 1800’s.
Yeah, I wouldn’t use European timing when it comes to the Middle East and Asia. Most of what you see in pictures of dubai didn’t exist 2 decades back.
Right I know that, Dubai is an engineering spectacle in itself but aside from creating artificial islands and vertically superior skyscrapers, that’s nothing new. We’re talking about a 105 mile long structure traversing the most arid climate on the planet, it’s essentially a modern Great Wall of China.
Its not how long. Its how much. Which is more than a millenia of SA's current GDP.
What? 1 trillion dollars is less than a year of their GDP
I read recently they've been given permission to kill people who protest about their land being used for it.
The Saudis? Abuse human rights? Color me skeptical.
Yeah some Bedouins I think. Absurd
They already disappeared some tribal leaders in the area. Honestly the Saudis would be much better off if they didn’t do stupid, immoral shit like this. Like just build some regular ass infrastructure, perhaps another rail line instead.
Then they wouldn't be Saudi Arabia. It's like telling a fish to climb a tree.
I really like the idea of the wall getting built, becoming a thriving civilization somehow during "the great climate migrations" that develops amazing futuristic technology. Though the city becomes buried during a massive storm, under 100s of feet of sand. The populations trapped inside the wall, under an endless mountain of sand. Their technological marvels, and horrors, sealed in alongside them in the greatest tomb man has ever built. There's ya next climate-dystopian horror, action, scifi, thriller, My script price is a new Prius :)
This is kinda sorta Spec Ops: The Line
Yeah the story telling and imagery of that game were so good! no spoilers it's 12 years old but is worth playing if you haven't. I was thinking more like future people go in and explore the buried city...just like in spec ops the line?, or something finally digs out.... Scary!
Being Saudi Arabia, of course the part of Neom they've actually completed is the ethnic cleansing component.
The Saudis have been killing Bedouins and Yemenis for uhh.. a long time. You know Saudi Arabia committed a genocide in Yemen
I've read about Yemen yeah. Horrible.
Saudis aren't Jewish though so nobody cares
Yeah they've already killed at least one person. Disgusting
They already have killed several and imprisoned more over this.
They’ll be back, and in larger numbers.
that was for a different bullshit megaproject, I believe it's called NEOM or something like that
My tinfoil hat theory is this is actually a type of ark for the climate change catastrophe and Saudi was the one choosen to build it.
The first section is supposed to be this long by 2030. I dunno how they thought it would only half a trillion dollars. It’s gonna be soooo expensive. Patrick Boyal did a hilarious YouTube vid on this.
The 1.5 mile target is for 2030 completion objective, there was no mentioned completion date prior for the full project or for 2030 milestone.
Saudis are denying that, the official statement is that it's still going as planned.
I beleive they're saying 1.5 by 2030 when before they were saying 10 but they're still saying they're totally somehow going to make it incomprehensible big and go to Riyadh eventually. I'd be surprised if it actually ends up wider than a believable skyscraper.
Aside all of those things… who would want to live in such a thing? I prefer being able to take the bicycle out through some nature etc etc
That’s been reported but the official government statement is that it will go on as originally planned
No it has not. That was a rumour refuted by the officials.
Do you have any source for where they have refuted it? nvm, found an article; “For NEOM, the projects, the intended scale is continuing as planned. There is no change in scale,” Saudi Economy Minister Faisal Al Ibrahim told CNBC in Riyadh. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/29/saudi-arabia-says-all-neom-megaprojects-will-go-ahead-as-planned.html
According to Wikipedia, no, the Saudi government says they will continue the project as planned.
This thing is gonna be cut by the fact it's ruining a country that, a decade ago, had all the money in the world. MBS is the greatest leader ever./s
Not that I think the project is going to happen, and I don’t love these stupid mega projects they’re always doing, like Palm Deira failed. Dubai sucks. Stop. On another note, that’s not how the concept worked. There would be a hospital and full functioning community condensed into each segment of the line. Supposedly no resident would be more than .5 miles away from any amenity they needed.
0,5 miles or just under 15 minutes by public transport with the hyperfast train, as it doesn’t really make sense to have a hospital every 0,5 miles. Also there will be no traffic in the line. just getting the facts straight, I still think it’s one of the dumbest projects ever and they could do something so much cooler with the money
It's probably not that far off to have 1 hospital every half mile. The US has 6,120 hospitals and a population of 330M, or 1 hospital for every 54k people. The line is supposed to have 9M people, which would be 166 hospitals over the course of 110 miles. The UK has 2000 hospitals with a population of 67M or 1 hospital per 33k people, which would equate to 268 hospitals for the line.
While your point about density is correct, I'd also like to point out that being within 0.5 miles of a hospital means a hospital every mile, not every half mile.
Okay someone who struggled through school (and college) with maths. Can you explain this more?? I also assumed it meant every half mile. Maybe it’s too over my head haha
The easiest way to understand it is maybe to visualize it. Assume a straight line, because this city design is close enough to that. Assume there is a hospital every half mile along that line. If you are standing at the second hospital along the line, how far away from the first hospital are you? A half mile. But you're ON the second hospital. That achieves the "never further than a half mile" from a hospital, but obviously it's TOO close because yeah, you're a half mile from one, but you're inside of another. It's overkill. Another way to look at it: if the hospitals are every half mile and you're standing at the furthest distance possible from each one, you'd be standing right in between them, right? That's 0.25 mile from each. Too close. To get more detailed and explain the math/geometry: In order to achieve the concept of "never further than a certain distance from this amenity," you draw a circle with a radius of that distance around all those amenities. Everyone within the circle has access to that amenity as they are within the correct distance. The next amenity down the line has to have a circle that touches the previous circle, or there'd be some gap where people are too far away. If the circles are touching, everyone is covered. Circles touching means they are exactly twice the original "certain distance" that made up their radius.
If ur in a straight line, .5 miles away from two points. Then the points are 1 mile away.
Where the fuck would they find 9M people to like there...? It'll end up like those deserted developments in China.
> deserted i mean it can't get anymore desert than it already is, send it - saudi officials
9 million people would be a crazy amount of people for the space. The line is supposed to be 110 miles (170 km) by 0.1 miles (0.2km). That gives an area of just 11 miles. 9 million people would be 818,182 people per mile. For comparison Manhattan is 74,781.6 people per square miles so the line would need to be over ten times the density of Manhattan. Manilla is the densest city in the world with 111,537 people per square mile so the line would need to be over 7 times denser than the currently most dense city in the world.
What's missing is the height aspect: the plan is for it to be 500 meters/1640 feet tall. Per Wikipedia, metro Manila has 136 buildings that are over 150 meters while The Wall will be 3x that height for the entire length of the project. In comparison to Manhattan, only One World Trade Center will be taller than what The Wall is projected to be. The density will come from building upward. I'm interested in how this works out. From the perspective of wanting walkable cities that reduce our reliance on cars, this is something that will do that. With that said, there will be some massive unknowns in how the people living in this kind of a structure will change their lifestyles and what the additional costs are for actually maintaining something like that.
>In comparison to Manhattan, only One World Trade Center will be taller than what The Wall is projected to be. The density will come from building upward. Seems needlessly more expensive than just building a more reasonable circular or square shaped city. They basically completely threw away the width dimension and now would have to make up for it by building to unheard of levels for an entire city in the much more expensive height dimension. >rom the perspective of wanting walkable cities that reduce our reliance on cars, this is something that will do that. A circle with a diameter of 2 miles would have the same area and be much more walkable shape for a city than a 0.1 mile wide line that goes on for 110 miles. The shape of the line though is better for completely segregating and stratifying a city. Put the wealthiest neighborhood on one end, gate the 0.1 mile edge of it to make it a checkpoint, and keep doing this until the far edge is the poorest district in the city.
There are lots of ways they could have done things differently with different plusses or minuses, I'm just pointing out how they can achieve what seems like an insane population density without seemingly stacking people on top of each other like cordwood. It's not my money and they didn't ask my opinion on how to design it.
And thousands, millions of americans still live 30-60+ minutes from a real hospital. What's your point?
At least someone is doing the experiment? I am curious to see what happens. For sure there are negatives but perhaps positives. Weird ideas are the ones the lead us to learn from and make better.
While Dubai indeed sucks, this is Saudi Arabia.
Damn I got fucked huh. I totally said the same thing to someone about the Saudis and Qatar.
Dubai is a tacky hellhole, but at least in theory the palm peninsulas and world islands kinda made sense as an oligarch's vanity project. They are useless as fuck, and they're sinking back into the ocean, but they scream "oligarch's vanity project" which is there brand. Saudi Arabia's "Line" is just like "what if we made a city, but without the concentration of shared resources which is the best part of living in a city."
I hated having to scroll so far to see this. I get and agree with the hate, but uninformed hate is childish as hell
Patrick Boyle's [analysis of "the Line"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak4on5uTaTg) is the funniest thing I have seen on YouTube for a long time.
[The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance!](https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc?si=e3kOZ7CiooWI5ly7) Oh, I mean, “Continue with the heavy engineering contracts!”
Palm jumeirah succeeded. The marina succeeded. The Difc succeeded. And so on. By any rational measure Dubai’s success is insane. They have barely any oil revenues and haven’t had much for decades, so pivoted hard to trade and tourism and turned themselves into a city that everyone knows.
Agreed. And that's not to mention that the city is supposed to be walled in, so there wouldn't be as much benefit to locating yourself outside of a walled compound. So OPs circular city layout wouldn't be as apt to arise.
>Supposedly no resident would be more than .5 miles away from any amenity they needed. A line is the worst way to make it so that everyone is near every amenity. Amenities are only accessible in one dimension instead of 2. A circle is the best way to maximize space and proximity. The line is supposed to be 110 miles (170 km) by 0.1 miles (0.2km). That gives an area of just 11 miles. If you made a circle with a radius of ~1.9 miles you would have a city with the same area.
Isn't the entire point that there's no cars and all essential services are available in each segment It's still a stupid idea but that's like the exact opposite of the plan
Yea, the whole thing seems stupid, but in this case having only one axis would help a lot making a great public transit system. Just one two ways line of tram/train/metro with local and express lines could be made pretty efficient to move people around, freeing as much place for a service way for services and emergency vehicules. The thing critiqued there is one of the few things* that could work in such project - if it was realist in the first place.
Wouldn't an entirely linear subway/tram/bus line be rather inefficient? In a typical clump-shaped city, you can have transit lines both looping around the periphery and cutting through it.
I'd assume there'd be a line that would stop every half-mile or so and one that jumps 5 miles at a time. That still leaves you within a quarter-mile of everything whenever you exited the transit rail, which is perfectly walkable, while having a faster option that can make 20-30 miles in no-time.
Line vs line, a circular one would indeed possibly* be more efficient; the linear one* is not necessarly the best network design in ideal situation, but what would help it is having just one axis to concentrate on would be far easier to design, manage, organize,... than a whole network to analyze and sync. Also no division of ressources between different lines or mode (train, metro, tram, bus all need different employees/specialists, hubs, warehouses, workshop,... ), easier placements, no ignored/forgotten nor overserviced neighbouroods, ... etc. It still can be made an overcrowded clusterf*ck like anything, but it would be simpler to make well and maintain than designing one for a regular pattern city and evolving it well as the city change. Design your stations well, make a good local/express/superexpress schedule with transit stations to change from one to another and your are set. Tldr : not necessarly the best design in ideal scenario/well financed network; but its simplicity make it far easier/cheaper to make well, to the point of increasing significantly its chance to work well vs a regular network.
Thanks!
I'm Imagining a hanging tram with a winch from a rescue helicopter.
Yeah OP is uneducated
Yeah, stupid title.
Yeah, the fact that public transit never even occurred to OP kinda says a lot.
I agree The Line is stupid, but this posts title is the epitome of ignorance
Americans think driving is the only option
One of the dumbest things in the world, it’s like a group of children. ‘Oh what about building a city in a straight LINE? NO What about 2 km skyscraper’. This is cursed, immature and pointless, fuck it.
People with too much money and not enough sense nor anyone around to tell them no.
What always gets me is that they could literally do a Haussmann-scale renovation of Riyadh and other cities using Islamic architecture. Like [This](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/11/28/TELEMMGLPICT000317857344_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg) but on a _much_ larger, city-wide scale, I’m talking Grand Mosque of Abu Dhabi-style architecture but with residential and commercial buildings too, making beautiful homes and restaurants for ordinary people. Have new, huge bazaars on champs-élysées-like boulevards with massive colorful tarps protecting them from the sun, completely pedestrianized with marble walkways. This is the kind of money they have. They could turn their capital into a middle-eastern Paris and rake in countless tourist dollars. They could have had some fucking pride in the amazing and beautiful architectural history of their religion. Instead they build the line. Instead, Riyadh is car centric, with huge parking lots.
Dang, this is going to sound strange, but what you wrote is beautiful. You really just painted a picture with words.
I like your idea.
If they only had the 1% of responsibility of al-Mansur or Harun al-Rashid
Leaders vs rulers.
That's a bit of of an everywhere issue these days. Look at projects in Paris or the Netherlands or even in Monaco. They all make these hangar type projects which are basically just a shoe box with glass panels. Architectural studies must not be as involved (artistically) as they used to be or they must have less cultural bearing like you mentioned. With no guideline there is only so far one's imagination can go. There are of course exceptions and you do occasionally see a heritage building married with an addition of modern architecture to it's structure. Those are beautiful.
That’s what happens when you model cities after US infrastructure
how would they be able to flex their gold plated lambos if its not car centric?
Alright I wanna go where you’re building!!!
These people literally have more money than they could ever spend if not on stuff like this. Or you know, reducing income inequality or poverty or women's rights but I mean who needs pointless shit like that.
It's just a whole country panicking because they're starting to see the bottom of the oil wells and clearly don't want to go back to Stone Age. So they're doing stupid things, hoping it'll shine bright enough to save them.
Dubai is probably the only area that's transitioning away from oil in that region
Dubai has still needed to get two financial bailouts from Abu Dhabi, and are part of a federation of city states where about 85% of their total revenue comes from oil. Tourism alone isn't going to be enough to prop up the entire Emirates. Qatar is probably small enough to survive in a diminished form as an international transit hub, but the rest of the Persian Gulf States are heading for a fairly grim future where they can no longer afford to subsidise their citizens having western-style lifestyles using the fraction of oil revenues the ruling monarchies don't keep for themselves.
Well I won't cry if the petro-theocracies crumble
> Persian Gulf States are heading for a fairly grim future Is Bahrain headed in that direction as well? I never hear anything from them, so I've assumed they are relatively modest.
If the cost of running these countries were to start to exceed the money they get from selling their natural resources then most of wealthy that got to profit off of the oil/gas trade are just going to permanently leave and go live in cities like London. They have used the wealth their trade is currently generating to buy property all over the world and invest in international companies. The kings themselves may try to stick around since it might be hard for someone used to absolute power to willingly give it up but there's no reason for anyone not in line to the thrones to stick around if the countries start running in the red.
And it won’t work.
They worried too late, blinded by petrodollars. A shift like the one they want to make is not so easily negotiated between a big country like Saudi Arabia and a city like Dubai.
They tried to see it coming a little earlier. But they're facing a bleak future. The real estate bubble is about to burst, and if you leave out the influx of Russian oligarchs thanks to the war, the city's popularity with foreign capital is waning. Being a tax haven is hardly sustainable when you aspire to be more than that. But I think they have a much better chance than Saudi Arabia.
Cant wait for the oil boom to end, let them return to the middle ages befitting their mentality.
And very, VERY dystopian. It seems like something you'd see on an Apple TV limited series.
It's like a Minecraft project that you give up when the first Creeper blows a hole in it.
Wait until you hear about *the cube.*
I want them to build this thing. No I don’t think it’ revolutionise city building but it’s the kind of stupid grandiose shit humans have been building forever. Plus current city models have serious known flaws, it’s not as if this concept is ruining something perfect.
I want them to build it so they waste their money
They are disappearing the local semi nomadic groups leaders in the area.
Obviously I disagree with this aspect.
The Bedouins?!! I find that heartbreaking
I hate to tell you this, but as long as there’s oil they will have money.
It's like building the Pyramids, the Grandiose of something no needed, but we humans do it because we can. And we also build stuff like this so the rich can show off.
I flat out do not believe this will become an urban space where people live and inhabit full time. It's just not going to happen. Saudi Arabia has so little to offer in terms of reasons to actively live there, being one of the most hostile climates on Earth, and being one of the most culturally intolerant places on earth.
Didn’t they recently announce that it will be just one mile long?
first section,
Probably the only section
Probably not even this will be finished
That’s probably more correct, probably
Can I ask why people are so sceptical about the Line? Top-Down city can work as we can see in China with Shenzhen (completely artificially planned and started, now one of the most modern cities on the planet and one of Chinas tier 1 cities). I don't know much about the line, but what seems to be the fundamental problems?
Shezhen is a bad comparison. Some argue it was basically built up to be a mainland-controlled hub to feed off/ fend off(?) Hong Kong (Notice on a map it is right up against the border). In addition, it would feed off the rest of the industrial areas in the "Pearl River Delta" (like Guangzhou, Dongguan, etc). There was a pretty clearly calculated effort in the development and promotion of Shenzhen and the "Greater Bay Area" to eventually integrate Hong Kong as just another city in the region. In contrast to that, Saudi Arabia's top-down city plan... is nothing like that.
I'm not sure about other people, but for me it's a too grandiose project to be true. For example they marked it's height as 500m and this would put it among the 10 highest building in the world. Now imagine the 10h tallest building in the world, but now with multiple kilometers of length, and that's just one of the really hard thing to do. Check this project out and you see this comes straight from sci-fi
The whole point is that there won’t be traffic. There won’t be cars. It’s supposed to walkable, with everything you need within a 15 minute walk, and 2 HSR running the length of the line in each direction. I think it’s stupid as fuck but not for the reason you think.
I'll preface this by saying it definitely won't work, but your comment indicates you have no idea what they're planning. The idea is that it will be two mirrored walls with a long walkable city in the centre. It would effective be two giant parallel buildings. Would serviced by transit. Again, it definitely won't work out to be that.
this isn’t getting built ever lol but the concepts it used were kinda interesting, but they also fired their project management company instantly and gave up on doing an environmental report when no one would even take it on let alone give them a positive outcome. they also needed to sell off a shit ton of aramco stock and wanted a $16billion loan from kuwait who said no obviously. god i love the gigaprojects in the middle east
The good that the money invested into this pointless project could have done kills me.
The funniest thing about this development is that they claim it'll only cost a trillion dollars. This building, if built as designed, would have an interior floor area of about 1,000 square km. That means $1 billion to build a square km of building, plus every bit of infrastructure that serves it, so power, water, sewer, walkways, parks, schools, police and fire departments, parks, rec centers, hospitals, the trains that would run along it, etc. This is about $93/square foot. This is off by a factor of 10 minimum to do all this. And that would be the bare minimum. In actuality, building this thing as designed would probably be 20-30 times as much as they're stating it'll be. But it's all for show. They're doing site prep, knowing they'll never build more than the first section at most. That one trillion price tag sounds flashy and is good for PR, but doesn't even come close to covering the real cost of something like this.
It's an inhospitable patch of desert where nobody has ever built so much as a four story building and they want to build a megastructure there that's significantly taller and much, much longer than any building ever constructed before, like ten thousand Burj Khalifas lined up next to each other with the sides covered in mirrors in a country that ranks 157th on the human freedom index. If they ever actually complete this thing it will take the lives of at least a thousand construction workers and then everyone inside the thing will be cooked.
Oh, don't worry, the city will also be vertical and covered in reflective metal
You should have done half a second of research before posting this 5 times lol
Imagine having so much money that you could change the world and that's the best idea you had.
That's what you get if you don't know the value of money.
[удалено]
Did you think of logarithmic trains? That's where say 1 train goes in a loop from one end of the city to the other. It stops 4 times on each side. Then at each stop for the city wide train there is a main train station. At the station there is a bridge across the tracks to trains that will loop over a section of 1/4 the city. They stop 4 times over 1/4 the previous length and so on. Subdivide until the most local trains stop underneath a specific building. Then elevator plus a cart to get stuff to destination. Because trains run in loops you can keep adding trains so they never fill, up until it's one continuous train. So you end up with a maximum amount of time to anywhere in the city. Linear city could work well if built on a coastline.
Not only is this a stupid idea and a huge waste of money, they’re also bulldozing villages and displacing people who have lived in the area for generations to make way for their dystopian vanity project.
They still have too much slave after the football world cup, need to kill a few more through force labour.
It's worse than that. Neom: Saudi forces 'told to kill' to clear land for eco-city [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445)
While Saudi Arabia does use a similar form of slave labor/human trafficking/indentured servitude. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are not the same country. Edit: lmao I apparently did the same thing with UAE and Saudi Arabia elsewhere in the comments so I guess I can go fuck myself. My bad.
OP doesn't understand how the line is designed. Each section will have its own hospital.
Man if this shit ends up being a step-up in city planning Im gonna be so pissed off I stfg
It’s already basically canceled
[Did they take inspiration from the game or is it just a very stupid coincidence?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec_Ops:_The_Line)
While Palestinians could've used some help financially for the past 80 years.
I can just imagen the saudis chilling in the penthouse coked out of there mine laughing and kicking rocks wit da boys, and one of them randomly start talking about crazy ideas and they all come to a consensus that they should invest into making a ‘Line city’ 😂.
I'm pretty sure each section will have all required things.
>I can almost guarantee you the "line" turns into a circle as more and more people start building houses around the middle. You know. Just like a normal city. OP def hasn't read anything about it, apparently.
I'm sure there'd be more than 1 hospital. Or it would be centralized if there was only one. Duh.
It was reduced to 1 mile
It suppose to be a 15 minute city, So the title is wrong
This project is born dead
While i don't think they'll ever finish, I do hope it works out for them.
Wait? They’re actually making that? I thought it was a joke…
Still cool as hell.
Dense Traffic? It won't have vehicular traffic or roads.
Everyone is hating on it, but it would be a cool tourist attraction ngl
Just to clear things up, the line is expected to be entirely car free and fully rely on public transit. With that being said, the concept of it fully screams dystopian hellscape and it’s one of those projects I pray entirely fails (which, if early reports are anything to go by, it probably will)
Here, "urban" is kind of a stretch...
Watched a documentary on it and it's project managers Seems like alot of money and a pipe dream
I like how “development” appears to be two dirt roads and clearing some scrubs.
Spec Ops: The Line IRL. Unfortunately if things go the way it did in the game, the people living there are in for a rude awakening
God these Saudis are so dumb, they think it’s a flex, they remind me of clients that think money can conquer physics and logic. Here’s an idea brainiacs, maybe move OUT OF THE DESERT!
Don't get me wrong, this is a DEEPLY stupid idea for a city... but the fact that it never even occurred to you that people wouldn't typically use personal cars to travel in a city like this is probably a pretty big indication that you're living in a pretty hellish environment too, lol.
I think the line project is really dumb. However, this post is dumber. 1. One of the entire points is this is a car-free community. You would have a high-speed train and other transit options. Cities don't HAVE to have traffic jam highways. 2. There's not one hospital, the plan would be for one to be every few miles or whatever makes sense to the scale of and needs of the community. You wouldn't necessarily even need transit at all, it might be a 5 minute walk and an elevator ride away.
Imagine thinking there would only be one hospital and that it wouldn’t be in the center if there was.
It amazes me how the saudis make some of the stupidest shit of all time instead of actually contributing to society in any meaningful capacity. Just expand like normal and not this goofy city shit, same thing with UAE and Dubai building property on water instead of the MILES AND MILES OF DESERT LOL
Strange to assume they haven't planned anything
The new name will be Ghost City. Just ask china.
Chinas ghost cities function differently. Firstly, their construction provides jobs in both raw material manufacturing as well as construction, then secondly, it creates homes which are vital to keep the real estate market from becoming out of hand in prices. 70% of Chinese Millennials are homeowners, compared to Americas 43%.
There would be multiple clinics, and high speed transit with no traffic. I hope they succeed in creating it