The Line, Saudi Arabia

THE LINE

I’m going to present you The Line, a project of NEOM which is a new futurist city in the desert of Saudi Arabia

This city is going to be 170km long, 200 meters wide and 500 meters high and will be recovered of reflecting glass, it plans to be finished in 2030 and it will by welcoming 1 millions of people that year but the aim is more or less than 9 millions. The total cost will be approximately 500 billion dollars.

The main idea behind this project is creating a new way of life. Nowadays cities are expanding mainly by using more and more land, The Line is going to be a city that will stretch upwards, for example New York City is 1200 Km square, the line is going to be 34 km square. This isn’t the only new way of living that this project is promoting, NEOM the corporation behind this city promises a 100% of renewable energy, zero carbon emission, all yours needs at a maximum of 5min by walk, a perfect composition with urbanism and nature, and more …

At this point it seems that this city is likely a dream city but it make us questioning about many things. First of all the city is located in the desert so the worksite is totally exposed of the sun, the routing of the materials, the preparing of the area is complicated. On top of that all this work is going to cost, pollute a lot and dangerous for workers.

We’ve only seen a point, there is more problems coming after… The Line is going to be recovered by reflective glass, so the sun is going to be reflected on ground making the temperatures going up, it could burn biodiversity around, if you remember well the line is a 170km long so the other problem for biodiversity is that the place is going to be cut in two parts not connected for the passing of animals for example.

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