Merged Neom / The Line - genius, crazy, delusion, dystopia?

carlosy

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I... don't know.

Saudi Arabia want's to build a city: 170km long, 200m wide, 500m tall:
The Line, Neom City

 
carlosy said:
I... don't know.

Saudi Arabia want's to build a city: 170km long, 200m wide, 500m tall:
The Line, Neom City

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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.
 
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It's an obvious scam to raise money and use it on feasibility studies in the Caribbean.

Just like the Japanese rotating moon base.

It will never get build.
 
Just the resources for materials alone is insane. I guess it could be somewhat equivalent to building 850 skyscrapers (500m tall, 200m wide).
 
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.
 
I didn't watch the whole thing but a little. Perfect if you like the idea of living in a wall, with the density of Kowloon and the aesthetics of a science fiction underground city. Fast travel and excursions into nature are promised. What is not promised, but I suspect will be delivered, is the opportunity for surveillance, vulnerability, privilege, containment and contagion.

Where will all the material for this immense project be sourced and manufactured? Not within it, I surmise.

In the library, you will need special permission to access the copies of Brave New World, The Machine Stops, and 1984.
 
If the goal is to reduce the impact on the environment, then isn't a straight line one of the worst shapes? Is 500m tall enough to affect local weather patterns?
 
Galaxie said:
If the goal is to reduce the impact on the environment, then isn't a straight line one of the worst shapes?
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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.
 
theprestige said:
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.
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I suppose it would depend on where it is. I note that the idealized illustration in the movie, as far as I bothered with it, was in a desert. If it occurred in just about any other place, and probably in many deserts as well, it would be a disaster for wildlife.
 
theprestige said:
Eh, the problem I have with that solution is that when they start breaking through the wall they're breaking into my living room.
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The apartments should be in about the top 100 stories, leaving about 50 for infrastructure and industrial and commercial space. So only the dragon would crash directly into your living room. The infantry hordes would have to work their way up the stairs.

That living area (100 stories * 170km * ~20m per side) appears to work out to about 75 square meters per resident. That's reasonable, neither cramped nor decadently lavish.
 
Yes we must remember how freaking tall and huge this thing is. Plenty of room for infrastructure, machinery the folks upstairs need never see, sewage, garbage, slums.


When they run out of funds, they can use the partially completed bits as a set for the lavish remake of Metropolis.
 
The building would be just a bit shorter than the world's biggest buildings. I suggest its height would make it very expensive to build. I wonder how they would deal with the wind that would exist at that height? Plus all the other problems faced by other tall buildings, plus other ones that will only exist in such a long building.
 
theprestige said:
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.
Click to expand...



This was my thought. One of the fundamental problems with promoting mass transit over cars is that mass transit works best in a straight line. Providing adequate coverage for a traditional 2-D city almost always requires transfers between at least two bus or train lines, and the scheduling of such transfers are always a pain in the ass.

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.
 
Horatius said:
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.
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Or, try out that high-speed moving sidewalks thing, at long last! The roads must roll!
 
I'm going to do a quick post-and-run, in case the hyenas that bullied me off this forum pick up my scent: don't expect any further input from me.
I live in Saudi Arabia, as some of you may know. I was told by a Saudi co-worker that The Line has been quietly shelved: too expensive and too impractical. Not official, of course, but that's how things often work in the Magic Kingdom.
 
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.
 
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