Saudi Arabia The Line

2022 - 7 - 28

The Line

Post cover — Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Saudi Arabia plans 100-mile-long mirrored skyscraper megacity (The Guardian)

The Line – due to be just 200 metres wide – will make Neom world's most livable city 'by far', officials claim.

“But funding is only part of the equation … demand is harder to buy, especially when you’re asking people to be part of an experiment on living and working in the future,” Mogielnicki said. The “first phase” of the project, lasting until 2030, would cost 1.2tn Saudi riyals (about £265bn), Prince Mohammed said. Residents will have “all daily needs” reachable within a five-minute walk, while also having access to other perks, such as outdoor skiing facilities and “a high-speed rail with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes”, according to a statement. Now it’s a vehicle for reimagining urban life on a footprint of just 13 sq miles (34 sq km), addressing what Prince Mohammed describes as “liveability and environmental crises”. “That’s the main purpose of building Neom, to raise the capacity of Saudi Arabia, get more citizens and more people in Saudi Arabia. And since we are doing it from nothing, why should we copy normal cities?” Neom was once touted as a regional “Silicon Valley”, a biotech and digital hub spread over about 10,000 sq miles (26,000 sq km).

Future or fantasy? Designs unveiled for one-building city stretching ... (CNN)

"The Line" is touted as a one-building city in the desert which will stretch over 106 miles and house millions but critics have cast doubt on whether the ...

"The designs ... will challenge the traditional flat, horizontal cities and create a model for nature preservation and enhanced human livability. Similar ghost town fates befell other costly projectsin the Yujiapu Financial District in Tianjin, China, and Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar. The Line forms part of a Saudi rebrand plan ---coined Vision 2030--- to rival its Gulf neighbors such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi as travel hotspots and reshape the kingdom's economy. The group has been highly critical of Saudi Arabia's visa sponsorship system, known as kafala. "This was a heinous crime," bin Salman said in an interview with CBS in 2019. It will span 34 square kilometers (13 square miles), according to the press release.

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Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman revealed the first glimpses of what The Line will look like.

There was also a mention of a sports stadium built 1,000 feet above the ground and the issue of how the project could disrupt the migration of birds as well as snatch lands away from the tribes of the region. The Line is being designed to put humans first in the pecking order of urban planning and strip off the need for roads to move cars and buses around. “We cannot ignore the livability and environmental crises facing our world’s cities, and NEOM is at the forefront of delivering new and imaginative solutions to address these issues.

'No streets, no cars and no traffic jams': Futuristic megacity a ... (9News)

Designs for a $717 billion zero-carbon city, clad in mirrors that will stretch over 170 kilometres of desert have been released. The futuristic Neom project ...

"We cannot ignore the liveability and environmental crises facing our world's cities, and NEOM is at the forefront of delivering new and imaginative solutions to address these issues," he said. "The Line will eventually accommodate nine million residents and will be built on a footprint of 34 square kilometres, which is unheard of when compared to other cities of similar capacity," Neom said. Little detail on how the colossal project will deliver the many impressive features have been revealed, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman claims the site will "address the problems of traditional horizontal flat cities".

'The Line': Saudi Arabia reveals ambitious carbon-zero city plan (NEWS.com.au)

Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans to introduce an eco-friendly megacity dubbed 'The Line'. The project features a unique design, taking the shape of a ...

Video reveals 170-kilometre-long mirrored skyscraper The Line in ... (Dezeen)

This video unveils the design for The Line, a 500-metre-tall mirror-clad skyscraper that will be built to house nine million people in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi crown prince wants you talking about his 'city of the future' (The Washington Post)

New details have ginned up interest in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's long-touted city of the future, just as he departed for his first official ...

Earlier this month, President Biden traveled to Jiddah to meet with several Middle Eastern leaders, including Mohammed, greeting the prince with a fist bump that drew criticism even from within his own party. Earlier this week, Mohammed flew to Athens and signed several bilateral agreements, including an energy deal that would see Saudi Arabia export electricity to Greece. The presentation in Jiddah on Monday — including slick (yet, some would say, dystopian) promo images and talk of an IPO — set off a days-long media and public relations blitz. “Why should we copy normal cities?” he added. In the past, he has used Neom, a $500 billion project owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, as a “key tool for him to consolidate his power” and a “lynchpin in his diplomatic efforts,” Ali Dogan, a research fellow at the Berlin-based Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, wrote last year. In this Shangri-La, there’s no traffic or pollution, just green space, amenities and high-speed mass transit.