The Line is the most expensive futuristic project in history. The glass city of the future in a lifeless desert. A skyscraper is a line that will be visible from space. Two hundred times more expensive than the Large Hadron Collider, five thousand times larger than Burj Khalifa. Many doubted that they were serious about it, but yes — the construction has really begun and is in full swing. What can we expect from this project and does it have a future?
The most ambitious project
The new administrative region of Neom is part of the national plan “Vision of Saudi Arabia 2030” to attract investors, tourists and talented specialists to the country. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced such a development plan at a conference in Riyadh in 2017. Then he said that in order to attract foreign investment and personnel, the planned region would operate independently of the “existing state system”, with its own tax and labor legislation and an autonomous judicial system.
The future of the country is at stake here, without exaggeration. The project is aimed at reducing Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil and turning it into a progressive state of the 21st century. The stated goal is “to move from oil to high technology and put the Saudi Kingdom at the forefront of technological advances. Enter the post-oil era. Make sure that the country thrives beyond oil exports, because those who don’t will be left behind.”
The total area of the Neom district will be 26,500 km2. It has planned more than ten zones, including the port of Oxagon, the mountain resort of Troena and the luxury resort island of Sindala (which is scheduled to open this year). But the main importance, of course, is played by the city of the future, The Line. The megastore is 170 kilometers long, 200 meters wide and 500 meters high.
The construction of the Large Hadron Collider took 10 years and cost $4.75 billion. The Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai cost $1.5 billion, and it took 6 years to build. The “line” will take at least 13 years to build and is estimated to cost under $1 trillion. The scale of the projects is almost incommensurable.
The first 500 billion has already been allocated by the Saudi State Investment Fund with the participation of international investors, but this is only the beginning.
The plan of the “Line”
The city is designed for 9 million people. At the same time, the area on which it was laid is only 34 square kilometers — this is two times less than the area of Balashikha, 10 times less than Tolyatti and 20 times less than Ufa. This, according to Prince Salman, is one of the main advantages of the project: if you learn how to build cities in this way, humanity will not have to take up much space, and the ecology of the planet will be preserved. It is not a pity to spend several trillions on the approach of such a future.
The expected population density will be 260,000 people per square kilometer. For comparison, in the most populous city in the world, the capital of the Philippines, Manila, the population density is now 6 times less, 44,000 people per square kilometer. This is because the “Line” is built not in breadth, but upwards. The population density will be ten times higher, because people will work, live and move in all three dimensions, and not only in two-dimensional space on the surface of the planet.
According to the project plans revealed in 2022, the glass “skyscraper” will, in fact, consist of two separate parallel buildings, each 500 meters long. Paths will be laid between them, public spaces will be made, and the roof will cover everything from above from the scorching sun. People will live inside these buildings, and travel, work and have fun in the open spaces between them. There is enough space there to have a football field, shopping malls, and several golf clubs in some parts of the “Line”.
The city will be divided into 135 residential sectors, each 800 meters long. According to the plan, regardless of the floor on which a person is located, it will take him no more than five minutes to get to the nearest shops and services. Parks and green areas are no more than two kilometers away. Unlike ordinary cities, there will not be a single center here, each sector will be equivalent to each other.
Trains are planned to run along the underground level with the name The Spine (“Ridge”). It will be possible to get from one end of the city to the other in 20 minutes — that is, theoretically, trains should travel at a speed of more than 500 kilometers per hour (excluding stops). It is also stated that the city will be equipped with vertical farms for growing fruits and vegetables.
There will be no cars in the city, with this configuration they are simply not needed. From the “Line” to Oxagon or one of the neighboring resorts, people will be transported by public transport, including flying taxis. Since the city is being designed from scratch, and the budget is unlimited, they want to use all possible innovations that will impress tourists as much as possible.
The task here is a little easier than it seems on some renderers: to build two separate long tall buildings and connect them is not such a problem as creating one large solid glass block
How to build it?
As a result, the “Line” should become the 12th tallest skyscraper in the world. Only at the same time, the width is not 200 meters, but 170 kilometers! And with complete self-sufficiency. To be powered only by renewable energy sources, to have parks, gardens, vertical farms and a high-speed railway inside.
Artificial intelligence will monitor the city, keep its parameters normal and use predictive models to improve the daily lives of citizens. It is planned that the “Line” should attract a lot of foreign specialists, especially from the fields of IT and biotech. 460,000 new jobs have been created for this. The city should stimulate the economic diversification of the country, become a hub of international trade due to its strategic location next to all trade routes of the Red Sea, and thanks to its activity, eventually bring $48 billion a year to the budget of Saudi Arabia.
It is impossible to build such a huge machine, especially with such an advanced “stuffing”, with current technologies. Both the architects and Crown Prince Salman publicly admit this. But that’s the whole idea. Such a challenge, the opportunity to create something new and move humanity forward, should attract ambitious and talented specialists. Some of which will then remain in the city they helped build. In this way, Saudi Arabia will attract thousands of the best engineers and scientists, and it is ready to pay for it.
The ideal outcome, according to Muhammad ibn Salman al-Saud, is something like the Miami of the XXII century. When any resorts and entertainment are available within a five-minute drive, and people are happy to work, knowing that after that they will immediately be able to relax.
There is still a lot of skepticism around the project. Youtube is literally filled with them, every aspiring architect considers it his duty to post a few videos about how “this is unattainable” or “is a scam.” Although it is still unclear who exactly is being scammed here. Prince Salman, apparently.
Promo images of what the “Line” should look like in the end are especially hard to come by. They clearly do not correspond to our reality, and even to the stated prospects of the project. According to French architect and urban planner Etienne Bouabdot, “the 3D images presented are not classic images of architecture,” but instead the creators of the project “rather turned to video game designers.”
Bou-Abdo believes that the Line’s plan includes “a lot of technologies that we do not have, and are not expected in the coming decades.” Many of the other key statements of the project, especially in the field of energy and transport, are based on technologies that do not yet exist even in the form of prototypes.
These images probably have little to do with reality.
Strange ecology
The project becomes even more comical when it comes to ecology. And that the construction of a huge concrete-glass thing in the middle of a bare desert will somehow help save the planet.
There is no connection to reality here at all. Pay attention to the tree on the right, growing out of the glass
The project becomes even more comical when it comes to ecology. And that the construction of a huge concrete-glass thing in the middle of a bare desert will somehow help save the planet.
But there is quite a serious emphasis on this in the “Line”. Up to the point that the building is designed taking into account the migration of birds through it — so that they understand that there is an obstacle in front of them, flying south or north. Neom as a whole expects to do without asphalt roads and without cars. It is planned to use only renewable energy sources to power the “Line”, and 95% of the land in the area will be saved for “nature”. The project’s website notes that “The health and well-being of people and animals will take priority over transport and infrastructure, unlike traditional cities.”
This is, of course, ridiculous. Philip Oldfield, head of the School of the Artificial Environment at the University of New South Wales, estimated that at least 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be released during the construction of the “Line”. This is more than the whole of the UK allocates in four years. They promise that the city will be built from materials with a low carbon footprint. But this is not realistic — they are too fragile, and are not suitable for such tall buildings. “In any case, they will need a phenomenal amount of steel, glass and concrete for such construction.”
It is also unclear what “renewable energy sources” will allow such a glass city to exist in the middle of the desert. At a minimum, hundreds of thousands of air conditioners will be needed here all the time, so that people inside do not feel like ants under a magnifying glass. Even if you cover the entire surface of the “Line” with solar panels, this will not cover even a third of the energy needed for cooling. The rest of the energy will have to be taken from the outside.
But these are, of course, problems of the second order. The main doubts among skeptics are generally caused by the fact that such a structure can be built today, and this is not some kind of deception.
There will definitely be no such landscapes there
The answer to the skeptics
According to the publication Unilad, at the beginning of the journey, the “Line” really faced some difficulties. For example, it was necessary to create small ports and build roads in the desert to bring construction equipment. They even made a whole town for builders, with its own power plants, desalination plant, canteens and hospitals. But after five years of preparation and an increase in the total cost of the project from $500 billion to $1 trillion, the process is now in full swing.
Currently, 60,000 people are working on the project locally. At the same time, all four cities, Liniya, Oxagon, Sindala and Troena are being built. We have made the most progress so far with the port of Oxagon (the land part is almost built) and the island resort of Sindala.
We know this from Giles Pendleton, chief operating officer of The Line. A month ago, he logged into LinkedIn and wrote a post: “How to respond to skeptics about the incredible work done at NEOM?” And I attached a number of photos that I took myself from a helicopter.
Every black dot here is a construction equipment. This is the best photo that captures the scale of what is happening
Sindala Resort
The future Oxagon
The “Line” itself has been implemented the least so far. But its contours are drawn, and in some places the foundation has even been laid. The preparatory part of the work is coming to its conclusion.
Considering that all this has arisen literally in the last year and a half, there is a chance that the project will indeed be completed by the desired 2030. The Burj Khalifa in neighboring Dubai was built just 6 years ago.
Giles Pendleton in his post responds to skeptics like this:
Look at the cross section of the world’s largest construction site, stretching from the mountains to the sea. Look at the massive excavations on the “Line”, the readiness of the island resorts in Sindal and the new generation of ports and logistics in Oxagon. The results speak for themselves.
Is it real?
In its original form, it is already clear that it is not. In 2017, Prince Salman planned to see in his “Line” a number of technologies that simply still do not exist. Flying taxis, robot maids, walking mechanical dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon that would light up the streets at night. All of this will most likely have to be abandoned.
Moreover, the original plans also included climate change. Due to cloud seeding technology, the weather in Neoma was supposed to be more pleasant than in Dubai, with frequent precipitation and cool days. Around the city, in the desert, fields would spread for thousands of kilometers, in which genetically modified plants capable of surviving in the sands would be grown.
It will not be possible to do all this either — at least in the coming decades. Cloud seeding has not yet shown its effectiveness on such a scale (besides, what was there about preserving the environment?). The transformation of the desert into fertile lands is also far beyond the dreams of the greatest optimists.
But it is more than possible to build mountain resorts, a beautiful island and a hexagonal port. And if you reduce the height of the skyscraper to at least 200 meters, then the “Line” becomes quite accessible with the current level of technology. Of course, if you have an extra trillion.
Experts do not yet believe that it is possible to make the city completely self-sufficient and environmentally friendly. But this, apparently, is a plan for the future, a maximum task to strive for. So far, it has been decided to move gradually. The ground has been excavated for all 170 kilometers, and the foundation has been partially laid. All that remains is to build a giant skyscraper with a railway inside it. Just.
On the other hand, he is building other megaprojects in Saudi Arabia. For example, the previous most expensive construction site in history, the Economic City of King Abdullah. Founded in 2005 on the shores of the Red Sea, it was supposed to become an attractive resort and industrial center with two million inhabitants. $100 billion was allocated for its construction!
What they wanted…
The idea was also extremely ambitious at the time, they showed us a lot of beautiful pictures, and even the construction went on. And now there is no information about this place even in Wikipedia. Google does not see such a city on the map, and its financial statements at the same time show losses of $ 330 million per year. Will the prince’s new city repeat the sad fate of the king’s city?
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