Neom and “The Line”: What’s behind it?
It starts to make sense. And not in a good way.
For those who don’t know: “The Line” is a planned city in Saudi Arabia of 176km length and 200m width. A single Building with an height of 500m.
I always wanted to write about “The Line” — mostly as a background for the discussion of stakeholder dysfunction. Nobody in their right mind would build something like this? Well, I was wrong. Excavation works started in October 2022, and not in a single place, but all along the 176km.
Why is it a bad idea?
Where do I start?
— It maximizes the exposure to the outer world. Traditional city building in deserts tries to create as much shaded areas as possible and stop the wind by avoiding open areas and straight lines. The Line is exactly the opposite
— It’s costly. A high rise is more expensive than a small house. More energy expenditure for warming an cooling due to the large outer surface. Expensive Materials are needed for reaching a height of 500m. But this is a desert and real estate should be really cheap. So why?
— Traffic jams by construction. All traffic has to be routed though a single mass commuter system. A subway can transport roughly 30.000 people/h. But we have 9 million inhabitants. So the commute for all of them must be very short (<5km) or most people must not commute at all.
— maximizing distance. A city tends to be circular in oder to minimize distances. This is the opposite. As a result most logistical problems are amplified. Getting from one end to the other within an hour is doable in most large cities. Here it needs extreme measures like a 500km/h train. Water has to be pumped 170km from one end to the other.
— Single point of failure. Everything hangs on a single infrastructure lifeline. Water, electricity, transportation of people and goods are all routed through compartments of a single tunnel.An interruption of one does not only hit the city in it’s entirety, it can also spread to the others. A broken water pipe can spill over to the transportation or drown the electricity cables.
— Verticality. The earlier plans tried to convey the idea of a long line of Buildings embedded in walkable spaces. Reaching everything by bike within 5 minutes was the goal. The current plan is a single 500m high building. Everything is near you — 100s of meters above or below. The city needs an enormous amount of lifts and escalators.
And these are only the fundamental problems that are plain to see.
Why is it a “good” idea?
First we have to ask: Who is going to live there?
Let’s make a small calculation: The Projekt is said to cost 500 Billion$ and will house 9 Million people. That’s just roughly 50.000$ per person for housing and public infrastructure combined. Costly for developing countries, but in comparison to Europe and North America a bargain. Spread the cost over 50 years, add maintenance costs and a reasonable profit margin and you get to yearly costs in the order of 2000$ per person. A family of 4 with a yearly income of 20.000$ could live there. The median income in 2022 was about 24.000$.
And the additional space is needed. The country will grow from 35 million people in 2022 to 45 million people in 2050.
Do you see how the numbers miraculously add up? This town is not so much an experiment than the logical conclusion to Saudi Arabias problems: Create large amounts of living space as cheap as you can with minimal amounts of infrastructure. This is public housing. Which is in stark contrast to the fantasy renderings of the website. The construction costs leave not much money for exotic archtectural details.
The Omissions
I am not an architect (at least not for buildings). But if I was asked to build a city in form of a line I would have given much thought about the ends. Neom also consists of a holiday resort and a cargo port. Especially the port would have been and ideal starting point for the line, both as a way to supply the city with goods and as a workplace for it’s inhabitants. But the port has its own city and the pictures show no connection between the line and the port. Remember: We are talking about 9 million people in a region without agriculture. “The Line” should be the main customer for the cargo port and the connection is vital to the city.
What about the other end? A logical choice for a rich city would be an international airport and a railway station for people and cargo that connects to the rest of the country. I found no such plans. And both take the same amount of time to build as the city itself.
Then there is the small problem of workplaces. Wikipedia says that the project would add 480.000 jobs. But we need roughly 3–4 million of them, with at least half of them connected to the export of goods and services, as the city is forced to import most of its daily needs. Solar farms and chemical industry are not very labor intensive. The limited transportation capacity makes large scale production within the city problematic. An it is not part of a trading hub. So it is forced to compete with other places for white collar jobs in banking, IT, research etc. But on which grounds?
Where we come to the next point: The development of the surrounding area. Aside from the port connection I would have thought that many roads would spawn off perpendicular to the Line to neighbouring industrial areas, where people could commute to for work. But I can find nothing about industrial parks or area planning. The Oxagon port will transport hydrogen, ammonia and chemical goods. But where will they be produced? How does the production relate to the city?
One possible answer: The city is not meant to be rich and prosperous. It has been build this way to be isolated and uncompetitive. More of a place to dispose of people that do not fit into Riyadh anymore.
Crowd Control
“The Line” is perfect for keeping people in control: All relevant infrastructure is placed at one end and can be shut off on a whim. It is difficult for riots to even assemble as they are both separated by distance and elevation. The city is build around the idea of immobilising it’s citizens.
On the other hand it is very easy to intervene from the outside, as nothing impedes the access from the top or the sides.
Add an all encompassing surveillance in the form of cameras, unified electronic payment systems and the lack of alternative access to TV or internet (no roof for satellite dishes).
It is any kings or dictators dream. A sophisticated golden cage.
Caveats
It’s of course all speculation. Maybe we just haven’t seen the plans because they need to be kept secret for business reasons. Maybe everything will make sense, once we see the whole city.
But I doubt it.
— I don’t believe in the PR. For a projekt of this size there is simply not enough information available. This does not lure investors, but distracts from the real targets of the project.
— I don’t think that the flashy pictures show anything near the final project. An analysis of the satellite imagery showed that the excavations were between 70 and 160m wide and only 20m deep. Skyscrapers this size usually reach 60m deep. And the width does not fit to the announcement of 200m. If you read the webpage carefully, you see that it talks about 500m above sealevel, so the building could be smaller.
— I don’t think that the numbers add up. It is wishful thinking that all surplus people find a cheap new home in a futuristic new building. Either the number of people is too high, or the price for the building is too low.
Keep dreaming about futuristic cities. But doubt those that try to sell them
