Have you ever looked at your neighbourhood and thought, “you know, it’s nice enough, but it could be inside a giant wall stretching across 170 kilometres of desert”?
No? Then you’re more sensible than His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who has just revealed concept designs for THE LINE: a city inside a giant wall stretching across 170 kilometres of desert.
THE LINE, which notably shares its name with the dystopian science fiction film that will inevitably be made about it, will (if it ever actually gets built) be 200 metres wide and 500 metres tall, housing nine million residents by 2045.
So, why would anyone want to live in this nightmarish mirror wall, which – we cannot stress enough – will stretch across 170 kilometres of desert?
Well, according to the Prince, it will be a zero-carbon, car-free city with high-speed rail connecting both ends in a 20-minute journey, built in a vertical style dubbed “Zero Gravity Urbanism” which layers public spaces, workplaces, homes, and schools to (theoretically) ensure no more than a five-minute trip to wherever you need to go.
“The designs revealed today for the city’s vertically layered communities will challenge the traditional flat, horizontal cities and create a model for nature preservation and enhanced human liveability.
“THE LINE will tackle the challenges facing humanity in urban life today and will shine a light on alternative ways to live,” he said.
NEOM, the organisation behind THE LINE and other “future” city projects in the region, gushes that the city’s 34-square-kilometre footprint will be “unheard of when compared to other cities of similar capacity”.
We suspect there’s a reason for that.
