The construction of The Line has finally begun. The city was first announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on October 24, 2017, at the Future Investment Initiative Conference held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Emerging from Saudi Vision 2030, the futuristic city plans to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors.
The Line is aimed to be a futuristic concept created by NEOM that envisions having 95% of land to be preserved for nature. It would also prioritize the people’s health and well-being over transportation and infrastructure, unlike traditional cities; hence it is dubbed to be humancentric. With the elimination of cars and roads, the city is aiming for a zero-carbon footprint, relying on a high-speed train line running underneath its length.
As of July 2022, the first phase of the project is expected to be completed in 2030. A drone footage released in October 2022 showed excavators starting work on digging the foundations for the £400 billion megacity. It will consist of two 1,600 feet tall buildings that run parallel with 200 meters of space in between, spanning 170 kilometres of coastal, desert, and mountain landscapes. Its location is imagined as a link between the Red Sea coast and Northwest Saudi Arabia.
The Line was designed for approximately 9 million residents, expecting the population to blow up in the coming years in Saudi Arabia. Residents are planned to have access to all facilities by walking and a high-speed rail with 20-minute transit. Powered by 100% renewable energy, The Line is indeed an overwhelming vision that triggered a lot of speculation from people all around the globe.
Though the Crown Prince claimed that The Line would be ready by 2030, engineers have stated that it could take 50 years to construct. NEOM have called the model of The Line an eco-city and carbon-zero, but the scale and social goals have created pressing questions about what the project can deliver to the environment. Design and city planning experts have questions about the feasibility and sustainability of the project in today’s civilization. Is it really possible for this megastructure to be carbon-zero with today’s technology?
According to Tarek Qaddumi, NEOM’s executive for urban planning, they are conducting continuous research for sustainable building methods and materials. The developers have referred to the concept of The Line as “Zero-Gravity Urbanism”. Rising 500 meters above sea level, the structure would be higher than the Empire State Building. Its urban life has a 3-dimensional organization; two derivatives of Zero Gravity Urbanism are Hyper-proximity and Hyper mixed-use. Rather than a car-centric design, the hyper-proximity city model prioritizes multimodal transportation.
The concept of “Zero Gravity Urbanism” releases us from the limitations of the ground plane and the necessity to demolish it. The model enables us to locate functions nearby. This brings up a whole new realm of previously tricky or unattainable adjacencies. For example, a school can be a museum. Through this project, Saudi Arabia will create 380,000 jobs and add approximately $50 billion to the country’s GDP.
To ensure the establishment of microclimatic spaces, the environment of The Line has been carefully designed to allow for an optimal balance of natural ventilation, shade, and sunlight. Furthermore, the green open spaces throughout the city are aimed to further enhance the comfort of its residents and visitors.
Economists, architects, and analysts are not quite sure if this vision is truly possible. So extravagant is Saudi Arabia’s plan to create an urban utopia that even those working on the project do not yet know if its scale and scope can ever be realized. Robert Mogielnicki of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington told Agence France-Presse: “The concept has morphed so much from its early conception that it’s sometimes hard to determine its direction: scaling down, scaling up, or making an aggressive turn sideways.”
On the other hand, the linear city concept is not fairly new, as represented by NEOM. In 1882, Spanish urban planner Arturo Soria Y Mata developed it and was best known for the linear city concept. In the 1950s, Soviet planner Nikolay Alexandrovich Milyutin and German functionalist architect Ernst May formulated this concept. Also, American architects Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman designed a 35-kilometer linear city between Boston and Washington in the 1960s. Though only Soria y Mata’s classical linear city idea was turned into reality in Madrid, Spain. The idea and vision of NEOM for The Line, no matter how seemingly far-fetched, would be indeed an achievement that is one for the books if they could turn it into reality.