Since there are enough 'Cons'; some of the 'Pros' that could be in in its favor..<p>- Everyone on both side gets unblocked full vista. There are no other buildings blocking the view or the sun.<p>- Navigation is super easy. No getting lost in the city.<p>- One single public (or private) transportation line (Metro, Bus, etc.), no criss crossing complicated routes. No calculation for what is the optimal route between two points in the city.<p>- Same holds true for essentials like water, electricity, sewage etc. One straight uncomplicated pipe infrastructure - easy to lay, maintain.<p>- Incase of emergency easy and super fast evacuation, everyone simultaneously 'spills out' of the walls on either side. No long travel through city, getting blocked due to traffic jams.<p>- With proper planning of shades, HVAC, etc. climate control could be more energy efficient.
This is what billionaire oil-money one-trick-pony-state brutal-oligarch attempts to legacy-project/appear-clever/innovate/desperate-to-be-relevant look like. Badged with the full force and blessing of the state propaganda machine. "Saudi-Arabia unveils". Indeed. "Heady fantasy" is correct. This calorie-free balony factory is all you're left with after you dismember everyone who opposes you.
Is anyone actually taking this proposal seriously? It's just not going to happen, and thank god for that because it would become the slum to end all slums in no time
Why not a spiral with roughly a mile between rings, filled with parks? Then, traversing between any point would be under 30min. The spiral would be 12 miles in diameter, with 6 rings, and all buildings would look out on “Central Park”.
Adam Something did a decent teardown of this:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyWaax07_ks" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyWaax07_ks</a>
After the war, Volgograd[1] was rebuilt as a linear metropolis.<p>Right now it's 50 km long. The urban part is served by light rail and the whole length by suburban train. But overall that design failed to provide any noticeable benefits.<p>1. <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=48.71167&mlon=44.51389&zoom=12#map=12/48.7117/44.5139" rel="nofollow">https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=48.71167&mlon=44.51389&z...</a>
Thunderfoot's take on this nonsense: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB_X5ZUcZlE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB_X5ZUcZlE</a>
No, thanks. I'll take the "unmatched liveability" of my current home.<p>Those who would be our Masters never tire of trying to shape the world in service of their ego and fears, do they.
I don't really understand why one would make it a line? If the objective is walkability, wouldn't it make more sense to arrange apartments in a square or - if you want to go 3D - a cube to minimize distance between occupants and shops etc?
I think this is an interesting (albeit extremely costly) urban planning experiment.<p>I like many of the ideas.<p>I am pretty sure that it won't work as planned, but humanity can learn from it.<p>The importance of architecture and urban planning can't be overstated, and unfortunately most of what has been done during the 20th century has been mediocre and, in some cases, catastrophically bad.<p>We have some good models for cities and architecture, but unfortunately, as with any technology, we only have a choice between innovation and decay.
"Let's build 170 km of skyscrapers back to back in the middle of the desert. Also let's make it straight, because the natural circular shape of cities is kinda boring."<p>Sounds like a great idea, can't wait to see it become a reality... /s
Most of the houses won't have sunlight?<p>Might as well just get a tunnel boring machine & do the entire thing underground. Cooler (temp) wise too<p>And still gets you the straight line that they want for inexplicable reasons
Fun fact, MBS was an avid player of Age of Empires 2 Age of Kings back in the day. One of the strats (albeit a very rarely used one) is one where the player builds a line of buildings all the way to the enemy base to get better vision. Take a hint ;)
No one is forcing you to live there. I’m all for people spending a bunch of money to make something cool and unique. Maybe it will work or maybe it will be a slum, who knows, in the end it will still be cool to see.
I've looked into this idea more and watched and read some additional content[1] about Neom. I encourage people to please ignore the marketing and read their words, instead. It will become very obvious what kind of a vision Neom's ownership has for us.<p>> <i>To keep Neom safe, cameras, drones and facial-recognition technology will let Saudi intelligence services track everyone.</i><p>> <i>MBS also wants Neom to host innovations like the “Apollo” project with Softbank, which will create “a new way of life from birth to death reaching genetic mutations to increase human strength and IQ.” Softbank declined to comment.</i><p>My interpretation is this is a merger of climate change religion as well as transhumanist ideals. The vast, vast majority of the world will never accept something like Neom even if its theoretical implementation is exactly like the actually-created-by-computer-graphics-artists marketing.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-princes-500-billion-desert-dream-flying-cars-robot-dinosaurs-and-a-giant-artificial-moon-11564097568" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-princes-500-billion-desert-dr...</a>