I... don't know.
Saudi Arabia want's to build a city: 170km long, 200m wide, 500m tall:
The Line, Neom City
It might be worth it if it also keeps the White Walkers out.
If the goal is to reduce the impact on the environment, then isn't a straight line one of the worst shapes?
It depends what environmental impact problem they're trying to solve. If it turns out that an extremely long, narrow urban core is a much more energy-efficient way to house, supply, and employ hundreds of thousands of people, that might mean a lot less contribution to global climate change from energy production, even if if it leaves the local ecosystem somewhat less "pristine" than other city footprints.
Eh, the problem I have with that solution is that when they start breaking through the wall they're breaking into my living room.
I guess it would be functionally equivalent to building an urban corridor along a rail line. One advantage might be needing only a single easement for all your major transportation and supply infrastructure, One highway, one waterway, one railway, one power line, etc.
So this would let you have one main train line running back and forth the length of the city. You'd be able to access a station almost anywhere with just an elevator ride and a short walk. The biggest complexity might be short-distance vs. long distance trains. Have a local train with stops every 200m or so, and an express train with stops maybe 2 to 5km apart. You'd only have to do a transfer if you were planning on going a long way, or wanted to get there quickly.
Portland has a pair of circular routes that ring the downtown, running in opposite directions. In a 2-D cityscape, that seems to be the best solution. A "linear" ring line, with transfers to spoke lines (bus or light rail) into the outskirts.
The style of the video visualizations reminds me of The Blue Estate (artificial floating island) from early 2021, which disappeared from the Internet and the media by the following August (leaving behind some YouTube videos that were still available last time I checked).
Actually, the purpose of The Blue Estate as a media project was never clear. On the surface it appears to have been a real estate scam, but no one has reported ever having actually paid them anything. Maybe the people (or person) behind The Blue Estate were merely advertising their services as designers of futuristic Utopian pipe dreams, and The Line is their latest delivery.
One of the top YouTube comments, by one Jon Hanson, reads, "This feels like the video you see in the first act of a sci fi movie before everything goes to hell in the second." I said almost exactly the same thing about The Blue Estate.
ETA: The comments I was talking about are on a different YouTube posting of the same video, by NEOM, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz5vEqdaSc. The Telegraph's copy linked to in the OP has comments turned off.
It might be worth it if it also keeps the White Walkers out.
One advantage might be needing only a single easement for all your major transportation and supply infrastructure, One highway, one waterway, one railway, one power line, etc.
... and one drawback might be being a Single Point Of Failure textbook example
Just in time for all the oil to become worthless.Given how long it's taking to put a light rail line in here, this should be completed by about 2300.
Saudi authorities have permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for a futuristic desert city being built by dozens of Western companies, an ex-intelligence officer has told the BBC.
Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.
One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction.
The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment.
Neom, Saudi Arabia's $500bn (£399bn) eco-region, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy which aims to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil.
Its flagship project, The Line, has been pitched as a car-free city, just 200m (656ft) wide and 170km (106 miles) long - though only 2.4km of the project is reportedly expected to be completed by 2030.
Dozens of global companies, several of them British, are involved in Neom's construction.
The area where Neom is being built has been described as the perfect "blank canvas" by Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. But more than 6,000 people have been moved for the project according to his government - and UK-based human rights group ALQST estimates the figure to be higher.
The BBC has analysed satellite images of three of the villages demolished - al-Khuraybah, Sharma and Gayal. Homes, schools, and hospitals have been wiped off the map.
Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti refused to allow a land registry committee to value his property, and was shot dead by Saudi authorities a day later, during the clearance mission. He had previously posted multiple videos on social media protesting against the evictions.
At least 47 other villagers were detained after resisting evictions, many of whom were prosecuted on terror-related charges, according to the UN and ALQST. Of those, 40 remain in detention, five of whom are on death row, ALQST says.
Several were arrested for simply publicly mourning al-Huwaiti's death on social media, the group said.
The BBC has analysed satellite images of three of the villages demolished - al-Khuraybah, Sharma and Gayal. Homes, schools, and hospitals have been wiped off the map.
The Line is never going to be built.
It's a flawed concept on every level.
Its a brilliant cocnept if you just think of it as a money laundering scheme. Or a series of money laundering schemes.
Has a "made to order" city ever actually worked?