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

Continuing on the "what could go wrong" level here, I'm reminded of the disappointingly bad movie "Snowpiercer," which did have at least one point, which is that in a linear society it's pretty easy to isolate the underclass. Of course that's possible anyway, and every city seems to have its slums and favelas, but it seems likely to be especially easy to do by initial design, if the city is enormously high and enormously long. Put all the low ranking housing at the bottom of the far end, or perhaps at the bottom of the middle, with the mass-transit equivalent of servants' staircases to get them to their destinations. In an enterprise this huge, and this complex, I suspect it would be very easy to engineer in durable system of social stratification, with transit, social services, etc. separate.
 
theprestige said:
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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That works well up to a certain scale. At some point, the city becomes large enough that getting to the ring routes become a problem.
 
Myriad said:
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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My favourite comment is:

Jeremy Buxman
3 days ago
It's like a late 2000's young adult dystopia novel brought to life! "In the Line, we could have anything we wanted...if you were a Highliner. Us Lowliners had to struggle to get by, and outside the GlassWall, the Lineless dwelled and scribbled not-straight lines..."​
 
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They are building it there because it is still cheaper than a Mars Utopia.
 
theprestige said:
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.
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... and one drawback might be being a Single Point Of Failure textbook example
 
Neom: Saudi forces 'told to kill’ to clear land for eco-city

Neom: Saudi forces 'told to kill’ to clear land for eco-city

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.
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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.
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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.
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Utopia comes at a cost

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.
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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?
 
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