That is the setting. You see, you might not be aware. You might merely see one negative article and dismiss it. That is fair enough, for the most I would have dismissed it too. Yet when you start using Google Search on topics like (for example) “Neom” the negativity list starts adding up and they all have something negative to say.
A long time ago
So lets take a small sidestep towards the young days of your grandfather. It’s 1886 and plans are made for the world fair 1889. An architect named Gustave Eiffel ends up constructing the Eiffel Tower. It was met with ridicule, criticism and a fair amount of hatred. It is now the most recognised building in the world drawing almost 6 million visitors last year, and they all have to pay. The prices vary, but it amounts to about $75 per person. Do that 6 million times over. I reckon that that so called ugly building has earned its investment back a few dozen times over.
So back to today and this time I am not using the media. This time I am relying on Popular Mechanics (at https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a44966174/saudi-arabia-line-city/) where we are given ‘Saudi Arabia Is Building an Entire City in a Straight Line. It Makes Zero Sense.’ I wonder why it makes zero sense. You see the start gives us “mathematicians broke down the numbers and calculated what the typical commutes in such a city would look like, discovering that it’d be better the built the city in a circle rather than a straight line” and there I am wonder for whom it would make sense to have a circle?
For the inhabitants of the Apple frisbee? For the Pentagon? Consider the life of most of us. We start at home (point A) and we go to work (point B) we travel from A to B to A and in between on that route we get our shopping done. A straight line makes perfect sense to some, not to all, but to some and the most important part in all of this. This has never been done before, just like the Eiffel Tower. I reckon that by 2050 any web satellite camera will have zoomed in on the line a thousand times a day, because as webcams and YouTube satisfies our needs now, a camera version of Starlink will most likely satisfy the curiosity of our grandchildren.
The question
What I do not get is the massive amount of negativity around this. Neom and the line are two places that have never been done before and has never been contemplated in history. Neom might become the first megacity that writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra erected in the comic book Dredd in 1977. A city 22 times the size of New York and Saudi Arabia (not America) is making it a reality. And they are doing it all whilst they have the fastest and most complete 5G network on the planet. As such I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. I have to because in my young days I studied ships engineering, not civil engineering (long before my IT and law degrees). In California a circle makes sense, a circle surrounding a park, but Saudi Arabia has a very different eco system and it is a fir bit longer too.
Then we are given “The city—stretching from the Red City to the city of Tabuk 110 miles away—along with its estimated 9 million inhabitants would be entirely car-less, and instead be tied together by a high-speed rail system that could travel from one end of The Line to the other in just 20 minutes.” Another thing pops up. America and Europe have entire micro economies based on cars and transportation, they would not exist in the Line. Then the train system. A 20 minute ride from end to end. Consider that this line is 170Km long. In the Netherlands that covers Groningen to Utrecht and it takes that train 2 hours to get there. 600% longer and OK, they stop a few times, and it isn’t high speed, but that is what there is and you cannot make high speed trains work there under those conditions.
The one part we are missing is that the line is 500 metres high. As such the building is significantly higher than Central Park Tower (longer and wider too). It raises even more questions, questions I can merely grasp at, but the others are merely coming with negativity. I wonder why. What I like about it is that no one has ever done this before and here Saudi Arabia is leading the way. If they pull this off (and I hope they do), the west needs to take a long hard look at itself. We might see all the experts talking the BS they do, but when this is done we get to see the excuses, the blame game, the lack of insight and the media would be regarded as culprit number one.
Popular mechanics also had a few good idea’s as they tend to do. They give us “Although the paper mostly focuses on the mathematical shortcomings of The Line’s design, it also brings up some good practical problems. If the city’s main train line malfunctions for any reason, for example, it could effectively cut off residents from millions of people—an idea that’s unthinkable in today’s modern metropolises.” And that matters how? I have two best friends. I haven’t seen them in decades as they live on another continent. I have video chat, phone and email to keep in touch. Beyond that my connections over the last two decades have been work and social events around me. I never had the need to meet up with millions and the train is a realistic idea, but things break and things get fixed. Perhaps the train line will have a spare line? Just a thought. In todays world people have become self isolating, it is a result of all kinds of reasons, perhaps the line will offer an alternative?
If there is my need for realism, it becomes the setting of the 500 metres height. There might be all kinds of reasons why it is that high, but on what levels will people be? And then the idea that this one line will house 9,000,000 people. The largest three cities are Tokyo, Delhi an Shanghai, still a fair bit larger than this line, but what area do they cover, what pollution do they create and how much of the ecological side are getting destroyed in the process? This is the consequence of old day thinking. As such the line is starting to make more sense, but it is also a place with more questions. I reckon time will take care of most of them, just like in the days of Gustave Eiffel. Evolution will take care of itself and when one is done the next will come and then one more and for now Neom, the line and Mukaab (which will be 400 by 400 by 400 metres). All in Saudi Arabia and all dwarfing most other architectural achievements. Three places clearly visible from space. So why the negativity? Perhaps the EU and US are realising that they are done for, but who instigated that part? Was it their lack of evidence (small 5G reference), their inability to create because they are now too broke to get anything done? You tell me, I am not sure of any of it. But no matter how these three are completed, it seems to me that Saudi Arabia has its focal point towards the future, all whilst America in true Excel style merely looks at the next quarter, a time frame that does not allow for projects that we are currently seeing in Saudi Arabia.
There was one final thought that hit me at the end of all this. The article gives us “If its 9 million inhabitants are homogeneously distributed in the city, each kilometre will have roughly 53,000 people” from that point of view it is denser than Manilla, the most dense city in the world with 43,064 people per kilometre. You see, it isn’t the fact that Manilla isn’t the densest city, it is that these metrics would no longer matter because based on the EIU’s Global Liveability Index for 2023, Manila placed 136th among 173 cities. Then we get that the current metro area population of Delhi in 2023 is 32,941,000 almost 400% higher than the Line. Certain metrics would become obsolete and I reckon that there is every chance that a place like the Line would grace the top 10 of the EIU’s Global Liveability Index from the very start. Did anyone consider those metrics?
Enjoy the upcoming last workday of the week.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 