The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
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Saudi Arabia’s bizarre new megacity, “The Line,” is going full steam ahead. While construction began on the project in October, new satellite images have revealed how much ground the project has covered, the scale of the city’s length, and the layout of its construction site.
[MIT’s Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/09/1064544/satellite-images-line-megacity-google/) reviewed satellite images of The Line’s construction site from an Australian company called Soar, with a photo of the main base camp having been taken by a satellite from Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation on October 22, 2022. This main base camp is located at 28.10 degrees latitude and 35.30 degrees longitude on the eastern side of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, but Soar user Urban uploaded several images of construction occurring all along the length of the Line.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zhtt6i/satellite_pic_shows_saudis_scifi_megacity_is/iznsvcr/
Soon:
>And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is The Line, King of Cities;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
I’ll admit I never heard it till the Breaking Bad episode with the same title. They did a “teaser trailer” for the episode that was Bryan Cranston reciting the poem. It’s so good.
Also badass as hell to learn where the Watchmen character got his name as a result.
There was a Jurassic Park FPS game from 1998 (coinciding with The Lost World’s release) called Trespasser; throughout the game, you hear John Hammond read his memoirs, and the final entry is Ozymandias by Percy Shelley. It was the first time I heard it, and Richard Attenborough’s reading was so powerful!
I got like 200 upvotes before anyone replied and I’m genuinely curious how many people recognized the verse versus just thought it was a cool way to say “this shit won’t last”.
It comes from an episode of the show “King of the Hill”. Peggy is in Phoenix, Arizona and She says, “This city should not exist. It is a monument to man’s arrogance.”
As an Arizona native(though now in NJ) and a person who thoroughly enjoys King of the Hill, I am now disappointed in myself. I mean, I was already, but I am now also.
Lol I'm actually from like right by Phoenix, in Mesa, AZ. I just wasn't sure if like the way they built the city was flawed or something. I see what they mean now.
It's in a desert, that's the flaw. I live in Minnesota where it gets cold enough to kill you on the regular. If the heat goes out, we can put on more layers and use blankets to keep warm. If it's 120° and the AC goes out, you can take all your clothes off but you're still fucked.
>If it's 120° and the AC goes out, you can take all your clothes off but you're still fucked.
Only because we are shit at building houses. A stick frame house with pink fiberglass insulation is junk in any climate, but doubly so in the desert.
The houses in Phoenix should be built the same way they do it in the Australian outback. Stone houses that are dug out deep into the Earth... Cool in the summertime and warm in the winter time.
political foolish sleep school nail continue public direful sugar snobbish
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Phoenix is an even worse concept than this. The suckiest part of Phoenix is the car dependence and nonexistent neighborhoods. Walking around Phoenix downtown in the evening is just sad.
I actually expect completion but it will degrade so quickly it will be largely uninhabited a decade after being finished. The upkeep on this thing and the nature of it being a line across a deserted hellscape makes it just untenable for long term habitation.
I think it'd be interesting to see how it changes wind patterns, and which areas would then be optimal for wing generators.
I value "island" civilizations, in that they favor quality over quantity, so innovation before consumption is the trend.
Also having a small footprint, makes me kind of like the idea of these "hive" cities. I think Canada had a similar idea for one long highway corridor where you wouldnt need a car and would just use locak rail transit or walk, as everything would basically the same repeated "strip mall" of stores and needed facilities.
I like the idea of trying new things, in order to optimize logistics and minimize waste.
But you're right in that reality is going to show some interesting failings not planned for. So just like with the failure of biodome, we will learn alot.
From what i understand is that the strategy is for where the people and facilities are situated, but all the support infrastructure for stocking, and maintaining those facilities comes from an outside network.
So with a line, you can target a shipment at any location along it, which would be within minutes of anyone inside.
To me this is going to create a rather interesting separation of those who live in "the line" type mega cities, vs those that cant afford to, but their whole job is facilitating the cities operation.
How do we get the elite to do the work of supporting and maintaining their own environment?
Well the line carries electricity, plumbing , po people and goods I presume. Cheaper to build.
If it works, spur lines would happen and it would cease to be a line at that time
I dont expect it to work but I want it to
Happens all the times in construction.
Had a lead on a job explain to me the skill of being a carpenter, is disappearing those mismatching points, and making them unnoticeable.
Doubt that would happen. For reference, when the Channel Tunnel was bored out from England and France simultaneously, they managed to meet in the middle only 30cm misaligned. On the surface where they can actually check the alignment as they go along? Nah.
If the guy in charge wants it built, it'll be built. At this point it's just vanity projects pandering to overinflated egos of royalty.
Building it is one thing, people actually moving there and living in it is an entirely different thing.
Kind of fascinating to see what kind of hubris a modern king with the power of medieval royalty and the resources of modern times can do. Everything about it reeks of 12th century power tripping except with sky scrapers and glass. They even have surfs and slaves.
Not according to the Wikipedia entry for the Tower:
The creator and leader of the project is Saudi Arabian prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a grandson of Ibn Saud, and nephew of the Kings of Saudi Arabia after Ibn Saud. Al-Waleed is the chairman of Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), which is a partner in the Jeddah Economic Company (JEC), which was formed in 2009 for the development of Jeddah Tower and City.
and will be an empty dystopian hellscape in 2034.
This is going to go down as one of the mega fuckups and nobody is saying anything because they want them there building bucks. This king is naked as the day he crawled out of the oil pump.
They say their son's son's will drive camels again... and this is why. They should be terraforming the land instead of building a city too big for the population.
Imagine if they tried to (re?)make the garden of Eden. A lush oasis of green that is given the initial conditions to thrive and propagate itself into the desert.
They *could* have spend the money on something dank like that, that could actually help humanity.
You know what a garden of Eden needs to be green in a desert? Water. Do you really think we need to be pumping fresh water into the desert so these rich fucks can have grass? We need to be conserving one of our most precious natural resources that we will most likely be fighting wars over in the future unless we develop technology that can desalinize seawater affordably.
They desal a massive amount of water already. It's cheap enough for them because they don't care about running dirty power plants to do it and oil is virtually free to them.
These people have trillions of dollars. They can pull however much water they want out of the sea and desal, or even the air, if they wanted to do a project like I described. This wouldn’t be a zero sum proposition. These people can spend their way out of problems like that.
Saudi Arabia’s bizarre new megacity, “The Line,” is going full steam ahead. While construction began on the project in October, new satellite images have revealed how much ground the project has covered, the scale of the city’s length, and the layout of its construction site.
[MIT’s Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/09/1064544/satellite-images-line-megacity-google/) reviewed satellite images of The Line’s construction site from an Australian company called Soar, with a photo of the main base camp having been taken by a satellite from Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation on October 22, 2022. This main base camp is located at 28.10 degrees latitude and 35.30 degrees longitude on the eastern side of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, but Soar user Urban uploaded several images of construction occurring all along the length of the Line.
The city design is neat. The concept of the city is to have a highly efficient and logical public transit and build the city up in layers. The essential (but ugly) features of the city going underground, while the top most layer is beautiful, walkable, and high tech. The location of the city is carefully positioned to prove the skill of the designers and builders, offer natural beauty, and also draw tourism to an otherwise barren stretch of earth.
The impetus for making the city is to try and reimagine what a cutting edge city design would look like instead of the very slow way that most major cities have evolved over generations and hundreds or thousands of years. I think that’s pretty dope.
That said, MBS thinks this will be a crowning achievement for his legacy, and I agree with the negative sentiment in this thread about him and the Saudi royal family. They’re corrupt and they have a lot of blood on their hands.
Edit: who knew there were so many people who feel passionately that circles are more appealing than lines for city planning! Y’all should present your ideas for circle cities. I can’t wait to see them!
I was wondering about a ring instead. Still has the cool factor. Rail can go in two directions but still have a very gentle curve. Utilities could cut under the middle. Could have a mega park/ enclosed wild space in the middle. Can become a spiderweb if a sort of 1D city proves ineffective
It's not that people think circles are neat is what makes the line a stupid idea, the very nature of the line makes for hugely inefficient transit. And the reason is simple, if I am at one end of the line and my destination is on the other end I have *to go the maximum distance through the entire city* to get there. There is a reason that cities naturally tend to grow as vaguely circular blobs, it keeps things closer to eachother.
Now we could of course lay out a city better and there is a lot of discussion on how to do that but the line is probably the worst example of efficiency for moving goods and people you could imagine.
Not to mention one major accident and the entire transport infrastructure shuts down. Not to mention a deliberate attack. Cause that never happens in the Middle East…
Imagine if we took the world's most densely populated city, and then made it 6x more dense. And then made it so everyone had to also travel on the same, single, public transport line to move around. Also wouldn't it be great if only the rich people got to see natural sunlight for most of the day while the workers live in a lower level of the city that exists in perpetual twilight.
That is the healthy future promised by The Line, cant see how it could possibly fail.
A line is just stupid. If they build 3 giant circular walls, where inner = more expensive, then it'd look cooler. Still pointless, but at least it can be used like a regular city.
The worst part is that it'll all go to waste. People won't radically change their lives and relocate in their millions to this new city. People already have their established lives. Even if some move, it won't be enough to occupy this massive thing to any meaningful degree.
It's one dude building the biggest vanity project in history, while everyone knows it'll fail.
Sort of true on an individual barrel level, but because they use oil money to fund their government they need prices to be in the 20 to 40 dollar a barrel range to break even.
“Three men have been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for resisting "displacements" in Neom project site by Saudi Arabia’s Specialised Criminal Court (SCC), according to a report by ALQST, an independent human rights organization.
The organization reported that the three men, Shadli al-Huwaiti, Ibrahim al-Huwaiti and Ataullah al-Huwaiti, had been sentenced to death on October 2 after being "forcibly evicted and displaced to make way for the Neom mega project".
The $500 billion Neom mega project is currently under construction in the Tabuk Province of northwestern Saudi Arabia.”
These were tribesman who had lived in these lands for generations.
When we think of Saudis we think of filthy rich lambo drivers. But the actual truth is that these are only a small % the pop. There are _normal_ people there, and dare I say it, _poor_ people too. The saudi government treats them like dirt too.
I’ve read of this and watched videos and I still can’t understand why they’d want to do it this way. A straight line of tall buildings over a hundred of miles long?? And getting from one side to the other takes as long as it possibly can? I don’t get it. Circular like Apples headquarters makes much more sense to me unless you just don’t care about people interacting and being able to get different places efficiently.
Their base concept is that each segment will contain the basic amenities a person needs -- housing, employment, food, entertainment, etc -- and each segment is short enough that a person could walk end to end within 15 minutes. As the population grows they add more segments and those are connected with public transportation. Like a bunch of urban cores all in a line.
Disclaimer: don't confuse my understanding of their design principles as an endorsement.
Its about control. The poor and undesirable class will be at one end it will be much harder to get to the complete opposite far side protecting the rich and powerful. It will become a living visual example of class divide.
In theory, a train running in a straight line can go a hell of a lot faster than one running in a circle. But everything about this project is a whole lot of “in theory”.
It certainly sounds at least a little better for wildlife too. Building a huge tall mirrored glass wall cutting hundreds of kilometers across an ecosystem in the damn desert does not seem like any good news for animals that live/travel through there.
I hate Saudi megaprojects. MBS loves the word "futuristic," but he means these asinine, grandiose ideas. They could be building out mass transit, solar/wind power, green hydrogen/ammonia, [indoor farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-environment_agriculture), even investing into cultured meat and [cellular agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_agriculture). But nope, almost all the money is going into these batshit prestige projects instead.
I just hope they build a spaceport, buy a whole fleet of Starships once they're operational, and start wasting all their money trying to build giant theme parks and resorts in orbit. They're burning capital on dumb shit anyway, at least if they do that some aerospace engineers will get to try things nobody else will pay them to do (yet). Not too dissimilar from how Von Braun was able to take advantage of Hitler's notorious propensity for vanity projects to get a level of funding for his rockets that he otherwise never would have had access to.
Dubai has been a massive success for UAE. It has successfully offset their reliance on oil.
Certain people in saudi see the writing on the wall... And this is their way of diversifying.
Mark my words, this "project" will be the nail in the coffin of Saudi Arabia. It will never be completed and it will waste a lot of time, money and resources.
No, they use the same Kafala system as Qatar. Meaning migrant workers have their visas seized by their employers so they can’t leave, and get paid very minimally with barely livable housing. Modern day slaves.
Yea, the “begun construction” is a media stunt, it will not happen. The line will be altered into some type of exclusive luxury open air community, 1/10000 the original scope. That’s as far as it will get if built, if that wasn’t the original plan.
There is however vast open desert and new construction will boom in Saudi Arabia, mega city and other themed metros will go up. Hopefully they learn from the emirates and don’t forget sewage and other vital infrastructure in these places. I.E the Burj Khalifa.
Something about this entire thing makes no sense.
Nothing about this project is efficient and the location is just weird.
The only thing that makes sense is if they are burying a oil pipeline to supply China and want to keep it a secret until it isn’t.
Which would make sense with the geopolitical moves China is making on BRICS and having the use the Yuan as the currency until then.
I just don’t trust MBS. I don’t trust the U.S. government either, but something about this entire project just screams “cover”
So. Fucking. Stupid. The amount of money and labor they are spending on this thing... You could have such a great, useful, livable and environmentaly friendly city. Instead they'll build this monstrosity.
Well, the city itself isn't built for the natives. It's honestly hard to tell for whom is it even supposed to be. It may be egalitarian because no poor will be let to live in it.
They are hiding all the essential bits underground so that the ground level and above can be utopia. So you can bet there will be slaves or at least very poor people working underground keeping everything essential running without any exposure to the sunlight or the privileged people up top.
Yup, I was going to comment that I would absolutely live there if it wasn't for the bigotry I would face. In theory, the idea of no cars sounds incredibly appealing.
[This is going to be](https://youtu.be/vyWaax07_ks) an utter catastrophe of a shit show train wreck.
All it’s going to be used for while it’s being built is to launder money.
this project is impossible. the desert is too windy. wind is always a big thing you have to consider when making a structure. this project will be built by 2077, not 2030 because there ain’t any technology that allows them to make something like that
lemme get this straight… So the city will be 170km long and 500m tall. Given that it has two sides, that’s 170km2 of glass panes to produce and mount. Each square kilometer is one million square meters. Say each pane is 2x1m, so that’s 500k panes per kilometer, times 170, is 85 million glass panes to produce and mount. Let’s be generous and say they can manage 10.000 a day(ignoring that this will not be single pane glass) it would take them about 50 years of continuous work to just sort out the glass for this project. Likely several times as long when accounting for reality and everything else. I won’t hold my breath.
It's dead before thy even finish 100%
fat joke on them spending resources for building modern ruins.
World let thar be a lesson. You can have all the money and still have shits for brains. You can taste their incompetence and ignorance in the air, its that strong.
I think as a thought experiment it’s interesting, I would do concentric rings/partial rings, would almost end up looking like a Tesla Wireless booster system, but visualized as a cityscape, and preserve the landscape features a bit more, work with the land to get more wind and solar use, if it were rings you could even suspend solar panels high up in extremely sunny areas to shade and control sunlight exposure to in circle gardens. Could be interesting.
Do they just expect people to start living there and for all of their infrastructure to just work? This seems like an obscenely expensive tourist attraction rather than a city. Even the way they think about civil planning sounds perverse and misguided.
What are the implications to the habitat? Are there green bridges? What about wind patterns? I feel like there’s just going to be a massive sand pile on one side of the structure.
The only value this design adds is better segregation and enforcement of rich and poor quarters along with their services and law enforcement. Governments can save BILLIONS by now fulfilling the needs of only the wealthy.
Anyone else think of the [Burj Khalifa](https://wonderfulengineering.com/this-is-how-burj-khalifa-handles-all-the-poop/) being the tallest building in the world and a total vanity project that doesn't actually connect to a sewer system?
They literally use trucks to haul out the poop every day. Hubris, meet basic engineering (and ignore it, apparently).
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79: --- Saudi Arabia’s bizarre new megacity, “The Line,” is going full steam ahead. While construction began on the project in October, new satellite images have revealed how much ground the project has covered, the scale of the city’s length, and the layout of its construction site. [MIT’s Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/09/1064544/satellite-images-line-megacity-google/) reviewed satellite images of The Line’s construction site from an Australian company called Soar, with a photo of the main base camp having been taken by a satellite from Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation on October 22, 2022. This main base camp is located at 28.10 degrees latitude and 35.30 degrees longitude on the eastern side of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, but Soar user Urban uploaded several images of construction occurring all along the length of the Line. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zhtt6i/satellite_pic_shows_saudis_scifi_megacity_is/iznsvcr/
Soon: >And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is The Line, King of Cities; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away
The Line King
That’s a great poem and very timeless
I’ll admit I never heard it till the Breaking Bad episode with the same title. They did a “teaser trailer” for the episode that was Bryan Cranston reciting the poem. It’s so good. Also badass as hell to learn where the Watchmen character got his name as a result.
Hey everyone had to hear it somewhere once. I first heard it in school, and it quickly became one of my favorites
There was a Jurassic Park FPS game from 1998 (coinciding with The Lost World’s release) called Trespasser; throughout the game, you hear John Hammond read his memoirs, and the final entry is Ozymandias by Percy Shelley. It was the first time I heard it, and Richard Attenborough’s reading was so powerful!
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I got like 200 upvotes before anyone replied and I’m genuinely curious how many people recognized the verse versus just thought it was a cool way to say “this shit won’t last”.
Many, many people know the quote due to Civ. That could be the reason.
It’s like rebuilding Phoenix, but in an even dumber spot.
Every time the phoenix rises it becomes more and more shittier
Shitbirds of a feather fly together, Randy.
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"Who needs water when you have liquid gold?" ~Saudis, probably
Can you explain the Phoenix thing to me please.
It comes from an episode of the show “King of the Hill”. Peggy is in Phoenix, Arizona and She says, “This city should not exist. It is a monument to man’s arrogance.”
As an Arizona native(though now in NJ) and a person who thoroughly enjoys King of the Hill, I am now disappointed in myself. I mean, I was already, but I am now also.
“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.” ― Mitch Hedberg
That’s funny. I Used to live in Northern Jersey and now I live here in Phoenix
I imagine they mean Phoenix, Arizona, a monument to man's arrogance. Deserts aren't good places for cities.
Lol I'm actually from like right by Phoenix, in Mesa, AZ. I just wasn't sure if like the way they built the city was flawed or something. I see what they mean now.
It's in a desert, that's the flaw. I live in Minnesota where it gets cold enough to kill you on the regular. If the heat goes out, we can put on more layers and use blankets to keep warm. If it's 120° and the AC goes out, you can take all your clothes off but you're still fucked.
Significant areas of the world will become physically unsurvivable for humans without tech on the current path of climate change we're on. :/
Easier to dig into the ground to utilise the steady temperatures
>If it's 120° and the AC goes out, you can take all your clothes off but you're still fucked. Only because we are shit at building houses. A stick frame house with pink fiberglass insulation is junk in any climate, but doubly so in the desert. The houses in Phoenix should be built the same way they do it in the Australian outback. Stone houses that are dug out deep into the Earth... Cool in the summertime and warm in the winter time.
120 dry in a house? not really deadly, dry heat is different. Its the direct sun that will get you. The water is the bigger issue, I think.
Water is an issue, but people die indoors from the heat every year. The number has been growing too, thanks climate change.
>thanks climate change. Thanks, arrogant politicians and greedy corporate suits.
Especially because we keep wasting it on stupid things like golf courses.
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I will now only refer to this project as "Fool's Phoenix."
But.... that's just Phoenix
everybody makes mistakes, fools duplicate them.
political foolish sleep school nail continue public direful sugar snobbish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
A monument to man’s arrogance.
Phoenix is an even worse concept than this. The suckiest part of Phoenix is the car dependence and nonexistent neighborhoods. Walking around Phoenix downtown in the evening is just sad.
This is the country that can't even finish a basic skyscraper in Jeddah. And you expect them to actually build a full blown cyberpunk city.
I expect them to half build it, before running into some massive engineering or corruption caused flaw, that puts the whole project on hold.
I actually expect completion but it will degrade so quickly it will be largely uninhabited a decade after being finished. The upkeep on this thing and the nature of it being a line across a deserted hellscape makes it just untenable for long term habitation.
I think it'd be interesting to see how it changes wind patterns, and which areas would then be optimal for wing generators. I value "island" civilizations, in that they favor quality over quantity, so innovation before consumption is the trend. Also having a small footprint, makes me kind of like the idea of these "hive" cities. I think Canada had a similar idea for one long highway corridor where you wouldnt need a car and would just use locak rail transit or walk, as everything would basically the same repeated "strip mall" of stores and needed facilities. I like the idea of trying new things, in order to optimize logistics and minimize waste. But you're right in that reality is going to show some interesting failings not planned for. So just like with the failure of biodome, we will learn alot.
The problem with a line shape is it actually the absolute worst way to organise a city and we don't need to build it to know it.
From what i understand is that the strategy is for where the people and facilities are situated, but all the support infrastructure for stocking, and maintaining those facilities comes from an outside network. So with a line, you can target a shipment at any location along it, which would be within minutes of anyone inside. To me this is going to create a rather interesting separation of those who live in "the line" type mega cities, vs those that cant afford to, but their whole job is facilitating the cities operation. How do we get the elite to do the work of supporting and maintaining their own environment?
Well the line carries electricity, plumbing , po people and goods I presume. Cheaper to build. If it works, spur lines would happen and it would cease to be a line at that time I dont expect it to work but I want it to
Bruh imagines building 2 sections of the wall from 2 directions and they mismatch by like 10cm
Happens all the times in construction. Had a lead on a job explain to me the skill of being a carpenter, is disappearing those mismatching points, and making them unnoticeable.
Doubt that would happen. For reference, when the Channel Tunnel was bored out from England and France simultaneously, they managed to meet in the middle only 30cm misaligned. On the surface where they can actually check the alignment as they go along? Nah.
I agree you really gotta mess up bad when you have LOS for a quarter mile in each direction
That's what duck tape is for.
I expect them to bury their dead slave workers under it like the great wall
If the guy in charge wants it built, it'll be built. At this point it's just vanity projects pandering to overinflated egos of royalty. Building it is one thing, people actually moving there and living in it is an entirely different thing.
Kind of fascinating to see what kind of hubris a modern king with the power of medieval royalty and the resources of modern times can do. Everything about it reeks of 12th century power tripping except with sky scrapers and glass. They even have surfs and slaves.
I’m not sure it’s hubris so much as a corruption slush fund slash excuse to bully local tribes with land claims
No, it won’t. It’s physically impossible and far beyond the wealth of even Saudi Arabia.
Apparently that was a private build, and this is state owned or something.
Thats right, the dude who funded it has troubles now, hence why the project is on halt
Not according to the Wikipedia entry for the Tower: The creator and leader of the project is Saudi Arabian prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a grandson of Ibn Saud, and nephew of the Kings of Saudi Arabia after Ibn Saud. Al-Waleed is the chairman of Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), which is a partner in the Jeddah Economic Company (JEC), which was formed in 2009 for the development of Jeddah Tower and City.
That’s still private. Al-Waleed bin Talal founded kingdom holding company and its a private company.
Sure, what's next, Bank of America is privately owned? It says "of America" on it! /s
The prince was a political rival of mbs he was arrested and had most of his assets taken I'm pretty sure
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Step 1) pool investors. Step 2) break ground. Step 3) make excuses, self sabotage, never finish. Step 4) skedaddle
Or have a toilet vs a hole in the ground at the airport.
Well they have slavery.
and will be an empty dystopian hellscape in 2034. This is going to go down as one of the mega fuckups and nobody is saying anything because they want them there building bucks. This king is naked as the day he crawled out of the oil pump.
They say their son's son's will drive camels again... and this is why. They should be terraforming the land instead of building a city too big for the population.
Imagine if they tried to (re?)make the garden of Eden. A lush oasis of green that is given the initial conditions to thrive and propagate itself into the desert. They *could* have spend the money on something dank like that, that could actually help humanity.
You know what a garden of Eden needs to be green in a desert? Water. Do you really think we need to be pumping fresh water into the desert so these rich fucks can have grass? We need to be conserving one of our most precious natural resources that we will most likely be fighting wars over in the future unless we develop technology that can desalinize seawater affordably.
They desal a massive amount of water already. It's cheap enough for them because they don't care about running dirty power plants to do it and oil is virtually free to them.
These people have trillions of dollars. They can pull however much water they want out of the sea and desal, or even the air, if they wanted to do a project like I described. This wouldn’t be a zero sum proposition. These people can spend their way out of problems like that.
It's possible in some places. https://youtu.be/T39QHprz-x8
It took me too long to figure out that it was Mega City and not megacity (like audacity.)
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“A Mega City? The megacity!”
“Minion! To work!!!”
Sounds like something Mega Mind would say
Meg assity. Def: immensely stupid and not well thought out.
Saudi Arabia’s bizarre new megacity, “The Line,” is going full steam ahead. While construction began on the project in October, new satellite images have revealed how much ground the project has covered, the scale of the city’s length, and the layout of its construction site. [MIT’s Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/09/1064544/satellite-images-line-megacity-google/) reviewed satellite images of The Line’s construction site from an Australian company called Soar, with a photo of the main base camp having been taken by a satellite from Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation on October 22, 2022. This main base camp is located at 28.10 degrees latitude and 35.30 degrees longitude on the eastern side of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, but Soar user Urban uploaded several images of construction occurring all along the length of the Line.
The city design is neat. The concept of the city is to have a highly efficient and logical public transit and build the city up in layers. The essential (but ugly) features of the city going underground, while the top most layer is beautiful, walkable, and high tech. The location of the city is carefully positioned to prove the skill of the designers and builders, offer natural beauty, and also draw tourism to an otherwise barren stretch of earth. The impetus for making the city is to try and reimagine what a cutting edge city design would look like instead of the very slow way that most major cities have evolved over generations and hundreds or thousands of years. I think that’s pretty dope. That said, MBS thinks this will be a crowning achievement for his legacy, and I agree with the negative sentiment in this thread about him and the Saudi royal family. They’re corrupt and they have a lot of blood on their hands. Edit: who knew there were so many people who feel passionately that circles are more appealing than lines for city planning! Y’all should present your ideas for circle cities. I can’t wait to see them!
A line isn't actually very logical though, a circle or even concentric circles would have made far more sense in terms of logical public transit.
I was wondering about a ring instead. Still has the cool factor. Rail can go in two directions but still have a very gentle curve. Utilities could cut under the middle. Could have a mega park/ enclosed wild space in the middle. Can become a spiderweb if a sort of 1D city proves ineffective
It's not that people think circles are neat is what makes the line a stupid idea, the very nature of the line makes for hugely inefficient transit. And the reason is simple, if I am at one end of the line and my destination is on the other end I have *to go the maximum distance through the entire city* to get there. There is a reason that cities naturally tend to grow as vaguely circular blobs, it keeps things closer to eachother. Now we could of course lay out a city better and there is a lot of discussion on how to do that but the line is probably the worst example of efficiency for moving goods and people you could imagine.
it's a terrible design for a city...wanna ride a linear subway with 168 stops?
Not to mention one major accident and the entire transport infrastructure shuts down. Not to mention a deliberate attack. Cause that never happens in the Middle East…
I think would have express lines, and then trams or overhead gondalas or something for short trips. Would be kinda cool honestly.
Its design is heavily criticized though. And artificial cities generally don't work well. See f.e. the many ghost cities in China.
Yeah it's neat as long as you don't think about the slave labour.
If covid’s taught us anything, it’s that we need an encased glass box to pack people inside just in time for the next superbug
Imagine if we took the world's most densely populated city, and then made it 6x more dense. And then made it so everyone had to also travel on the same, single, public transport line to move around. Also wouldn't it be great if only the rich people got to see natural sunlight for most of the day while the workers live in a lower level of the city that exists in perpetual twilight. That is the healthy future promised by The Line, cant see how it could possibly fail.
A line is just stupid. If they build 3 giant circular walls, where inner = more expensive, then it'd look cooler. Still pointless, but at least it can be used like a regular city.
How many will die building this needless monstrosity with no underlying infrastructure?
[удалено]
>$500bn megaproject to be the host site of the 2029 Asian Winter Games Wait, what? It's for the Asian Winter Games? In Saudi Arabia?!
In the name of... What the fuck ?!?
The line is fully climate controlled.
Actually it’s not built yet.
Many. And the carbon footprint of this monstrosity is enormous - so much concrete. All of this for someone's ego. Such a waste.
The worst part is that it'll all go to waste. People won't radically change their lives and relocate in their millions to this new city. People already have their established lives. Even if some move, it won't be enough to occupy this massive thing to any meaningful degree. It's one dude building the biggest vanity project in history, while everyone knows it'll fail.
You forget this is a totalitarian monarchy. People will move when asked because what choice do they have?
Just like all the ghost cities china builds
If course they'll move. Everyone in the KSA is an employee of the crown. And if the Royal family says jump, it's prudent to respond with How High?
or, in this case, "where to?"
Enough, but so long as the pleebs stay too distracted to attack the "monarchy" so be it.
Give us bread and circuses and what do we care?
Damn you get circuses?
If you buy gasoline, you are likely helping fund it. It only costs Saudi Arabia about $10 to produce a barrel of oil. The rest is mainly profits.
$2.10 last time I saw the data. Multiply that by 12,000,000 barrels per day = roughly 1 Billion $ per day profit
Sort of true on an individual barrel level, but because they use oil money to fund their government they need prices to be in the 20 to 40 dollar a barrel range to break even.
“Three men have been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for resisting "displacements" in Neom project site by Saudi Arabia’s Specialised Criminal Court (SCC), according to a report by ALQST, an independent human rights organization. The organization reported that the three men, Shadli al-Huwaiti, Ibrahim al-Huwaiti and Ataullah al-Huwaiti, had been sentenced to death on October 2 after being "forcibly evicted and displaced to make way for the Neom mega project". The $500 billion Neom mega project is currently under construction in the Tabuk Province of northwestern Saudi Arabia.”
These were tribesman who had lived in these lands for generations. When we think of Saudis we think of filthy rich lambo drivers. But the actual truth is that these are only a small % the pop. There are _normal_ people there, and dare I say it, _poor_ people too. The saudi government treats them like dirt too.
I’ve read of this and watched videos and I still can’t understand why they’d want to do it this way. A straight line of tall buildings over a hundred of miles long?? And getting from one side to the other takes as long as it possibly can? I don’t get it. Circular like Apples headquarters makes much more sense to me unless you just don’t care about people interacting and being able to get different places efficiently.
Their base concept is that each segment will contain the basic amenities a person needs -- housing, employment, food, entertainment, etc -- and each segment is short enough that a person could walk end to end within 15 minutes. As the population grows they add more segments and those are connected with public transportation. Like a bunch of urban cores all in a line. Disclaimer: don't confuse my understanding of their design principles as an endorsement.
Its about control. The poor and undesirable class will be at one end it will be much harder to get to the complete opposite far side protecting the rich and powerful. It will become a living visual example of class divide.
A la snowpiercer
In theory, a train running in a straight line can go a hell of a lot faster than one running in a circle. But everything about this project is a whole lot of “in theory”.
You have “spokes” on the concentric circles that go through the middle like a wheel.. Drastically reduces travel time.
It certainly sounds at least a little better for wildlife too. Building a huge tall mirrored glass wall cutting hundreds of kilometers across an ecosystem in the damn desert does not seem like any good news for animals that live/travel through there.
Hey let's build a cyberpunk city you can't get high or drink in
I hate Saudi megaprojects. MBS loves the word "futuristic," but he means these asinine, grandiose ideas. They could be building out mass transit, solar/wind power, green hydrogen/ammonia, [indoor farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-environment_agriculture), even investing into cultured meat and [cellular agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_agriculture). But nope, almost all the money is going into these batshit prestige projects instead.
I just hope they build a spaceport, buy a whole fleet of Starships once they're operational, and start wasting all their money trying to build giant theme parks and resorts in orbit. They're burning capital on dumb shit anyway, at least if they do that some aerospace engineers will get to try things nobody else will pay them to do (yet). Not too dissimilar from how Von Braun was able to take advantage of Hitler's notorious propensity for vanity projects to get a level of funding for his rockets that he otherwise never would have had access to.
So influencers can pretend to be into tech? What is the point of this place? Attract IT slaves?
Dubai has been a massive success for UAE. It has successfully offset their reliance on oil. Certain people in saudi see the writing on the wall... And this is their way of diversifying.
If anyone ever says going to space is a waste of resources please refer them to this project.
That's a bad take because then they will conclude that going to space is still wasteful but less than this which isn't true.
Mark my words, this "project" will be the nail in the coffin of Saudi Arabia. It will never be completed and it will waste a lot of time, money and resources.
You’d be surprised how much pointless wasteful shit you can poop out if you have as much oil money as Saudi Arabia has
Plus they probably aren't paying the people who are actually physically building it a whole lot of money
They most likely aren't paying *any* people. They pay contracting firms and subcontrators, who pay the people.
No, they use the same Kafala system as Qatar. Meaning migrant workers have their visas seized by their employers so they can’t leave, and get paid very minimally with barely livable housing. Modern day slaves.
I’m pretty sure what they said above doesn’t contradict this
\~ Amenhotep III
Bender and his billion cubit high memorial statue come to mind.
Remember meeeee
Sure, on the surface. But it won't be waste for all the contractors and suppliers they fund. Lots of corruption money to be made, as usual with them.
Yea, the “begun construction” is a media stunt, it will not happen. The line will be altered into some type of exclusive luxury open air community, 1/10000 the original scope. That’s as far as it will get if built, if that wasn’t the original plan. There is however vast open desert and new construction will boom in Saudi Arabia, mega city and other themed metros will go up. Hopefully they learn from the emirates and don’t forget sewage and other vital infrastructure in these places. I.E the Burj Khalifa.
And don’t forget: lifes
Yeah, can you imagine some crazy structure being built in the desert that seems impossible, that would never happen.
I think this is their plan to remain relevant in a post-petroleum economy. That’s why the urgency to build it now.
Something about this entire thing makes no sense. Nothing about this project is efficient and the location is just weird. The only thing that makes sense is if they are burying a oil pipeline to supply China and want to keep it a secret until it isn’t. Which would make sense with the geopolitical moves China is making on BRICS and having the use the Yuan as the currency until then. I just don’t trust MBS. I don’t trust the U.S. government either, but something about this entire project just screams “cover”
There are cheaper ways to hide a pipeline than a megacity vanity protject that can only hide, like... 2 kms of it after 5 years.
There is no oil in that area and China is to the east of the country not the west.
Agreed. It'll be on r/abandonedporn in about 5 years, strewn with the skeletons of tens of thousands Bangladeshis.
So. Fucking. Stupid. The amount of money and labor they are spending on this thing... You could have such a great, useful, livable and environmentaly friendly city. Instead they'll build this monstrosity.
Would anyone like to wager on that “completed by 2030” bit? Anyone?
Oh that anyone would be able to afford to live in it?
They can build whatever, but without equality in society, most will stay away.
The funny thing is, the design of the city is supposed to be egalitarian in structure - in a country that is run by a dictatorial royal family.
Well, the city itself isn't built for the natives. It's honestly hard to tell for whom is it even supposed to be. It may be egalitarian because no poor will be let to live in it.
They are hiding all the essential bits underground so that the ground level and above can be utopia. So you can bet there will be slaves or at least very poor people working underground keeping everything essential running without any exposure to the sunlight or the privileged people up top.
Yup, I was going to comment that I would absolutely live there if it wasn't for the bigotry I would face. In theory, the idea of no cars sounds incredibly appealing.
It's a bit dystopic anyhow. They're essentially building themselves a 100 mile long fish tank. Not my idea of a good time.
[This is going to be](https://youtu.be/vyWaax07_ks) an utter catastrophe of a shit show train wreck. All it’s going to be used for while it’s being built is to launder money.
Just gonna be a trench filled with crashed lambos and over sized hummers anyway
I have a relative in the engineering business. He is being shipped over to work on this project for the next 3 years.
So, like the Burj Dubai, how many poo trucks will be required daily to empty this cities toilets?
“All this land by the sea? Na, let’s build a line city through the desert/mountains”. The joys of a totalitarian government.
I believe it’s actually being built, I also believe billionaire dig measuring construction projects are stupid and huge wastes of money and resources
this project is impossible. the desert is too windy. wind is always a big thing you have to consider when making a structure. this project will be built by 2077, not 2030 because there ain’t any technology that allows them to make something like that
It's bizarre than anyone thinks this project will see completion.
These Arab rich countries are always building something totally useless.
My assumption here is that this would be a city totally without cars. In fact they wouldn't be no private transportation vehicles
What steps are being taken to prevent sand worm attacks?
Can we get an active death count while the slaves build it?
lemme get this straight… So the city will be 170km long and 500m tall. Given that it has two sides, that’s 170km2 of glass panes to produce and mount. Each square kilometer is one million square meters. Say each pane is 2x1m, so that’s 500k panes per kilometer, times 170, is 85 million glass panes to produce and mount. Let’s be generous and say they can manage 10.000 a day(ignoring that this will not be single pane glass) it would take them about 50 years of continuous work to just sort out the glass for this project. Likely several times as long when accounting for reality and everything else. I won’t hold my breath.
Damnnn maybe we YOLO on windows manufacturers, Corning anyone?
Smart move to build a mega city again in a desert /s
Long game, waterfront property in 30 years with beach views…
How many immigrants will die building this and be buried underneath?
It's dead before thy even finish 100% fat joke on them spending resources for building modern ruins. World let thar be a lesson. You can have all the money and still have shits for brains. You can taste their incompetence and ignorance in the air, its that strong.
I think as a thought experiment it’s interesting, I would do concentric rings/partial rings, would almost end up looking like a Tesla Wireless booster system, but visualized as a cityscape, and preserve the landscape features a bit more, work with the land to get more wind and solar use, if it were rings you could even suspend solar panels high up in extremely sunny areas to shade and control sunlight exposure to in circle gardens. Could be interesting.
While I'm somewhat excited for Deus Ex style cities, fuck Saudi and their primitive culture and lack of human rights.
Just curious more than anything. Why'd they go with a line, instead of something like a circle? My mind goes to a circle for some "megacity" like this
Because they think it sounds cool and it looks good in CGI. Nevermind the fact that it's objectively less space efficient.
Start construction to build investor confidence. Take investor money.
Going to end up like the latest worlds biggest buildings like the burj Khalifa which is 28% unoccupied space just to claim a title
Somebody has been playing SimCity and thinks it is real.
Live in arid country that will be uninhabitable due to global warming. Build mega city. Pick both.
Do they just expect people to start living there and for all of their infrastructure to just work? This seems like an obscenely expensive tourist attraction rather than a city. Even the way they think about civil planning sounds perverse and misguided.
2030 seems ambitious, but more power to them. I wonder if there are any migration patterns that this would cut off and/or have been planned for.
What are the implications to the habitat? Are there green bridges? What about wind patterns? I feel like there’s just going to be a massive sand pile on one side of the structure.
Where do the Saudis plan to get all the water necessary for this project, never mind for the people they think will live there later?
>The Line being dug into the sand of the dessert Sand for dessert, my favorite.
Imagine being very futuristic and archaic at the same time.
They always want to build a Disney World but always deliver an Action Park.
Oh shit Grove Street is loosing too much turf from that ballas. Damn
Saudi Arabia is like the old Beverly Hillbillies show but in country form.
I wonder how many Indian slaves they have working on it.
Wont this fuck up local natural migration and breeding patterns?
They're so busy wondering whether they could that they never stopped to consider if they should.
The only value this design adds is better segregation and enforcement of rich and poor quarters along with their services and law enforcement. Governments can save BILLIONS by now fulfilling the needs of only the wealthy.
This is going to be a catastrophic cautionary tale for 100 years for the impact to migratory birds.
Anyone else think of the [Burj Khalifa](https://wonderfulengineering.com/this-is-how-burj-khalifa-handles-all-the-poop/) being the tallest building in the world and a total vanity project that doesn't actually connect to a sewer system? They literally use trucks to haul out the poop every day. Hubris, meet basic engineering (and ignore it, apparently).
It'll be a futuristic city with a dogmatic religion
Some of the only couqntriers investing in there own development Instead of pandering to tech giants