NEOM CITY The Line

    The beginning of construction on Saudi Arabia's "The Line" was captured on drone footage.

In recent months, there has been a lot of discussion about the project. Most people think it is too big to build and looks like something from a science fiction movie.

But how will this play out now that construction has actually begun?

Could this be the beginning of the greatest megaproject ever undertaken in the world? Or will the Line ultimately become a construction error costing a trillion dollars and be scrapped?

Let's investigate!

    In July 2022, Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohamad Bin Salman presented the Line's precise design, which we already discussed in our initial video about the Line. He proposed two parallel 500-meter-tall glass skyscrapers that would run parallel through the desert for 170 kilometers. Two lines of 2000 One World Trade Centers each would be the same as this. Not only is the Line the largest megaproject ever proposed, but This is a novel way of life. The city would be car-free, and you could walk to any place you needed to be in five minutes.

Wind and solar farms would generate all of the energy, and a carbon-free desalination plant would provide any water used.

All of this would make the Line a 'zero carbon city'.

There was a mix of shock, awe, and suspicion surrounding the proposal.

Even though the trailers were viewed millions of times on YouTube and other sites, little was known about what was actually going on at the construction site. As a result, most people thought that The Line was just a publicity stunt to get people's attention. However, a surprising turn occurred approximately three months after Mohamad Bin Salman's presentation.

The building began: On the nineteenth of October 2022, drone film of the building site was uncovered by OT Sky.



The video features excavator guides digging trenches that will serve as the Line's foundation along the desert. The footage from the drone suggests that the excavation is already quite far inland. It's difficult to express the way that far it precisely goes yet they could be near the mountains in the foundation.

The footage probably came from somewhere else because of the terrain and the sea in the background. Therefore, the excavations may already be between 10 and 20 kilometers long. In addition, additional infrastructure is being constructed around the project as a whole. There are numerous developments visible on Google Maps.

Near the mountains, there is a Neom experience center, a Neom community with a football field and swimming pools, and a whole site with offices and camps. There are probably many more by now given that these images are out of date.

How could this possibly play out now that construction has actually begun? This is unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Therefore, we can only speculate regarding the next step. However, we can basically say that there are three outcomes.

The first possibility is that no one will move in and construction on the Line will stop in a few months or even years. It could become a project, like the Jeddah Tower or the Dubai Creek Tower, whose construction status is unknown.

Beautiful renderings were displayed in both instances, and significant promises were made. The construction had begun, and it appeared that the buildings would be completed. But after that, nothing moved forward, and nothing has changed.

However, given that the Line is supported by an entire nation and has received a lot of attention from around the world, this seems like a less likely outcome.

If the project is even remotely close to being finished, it could be a great way to bring more tourists and investors to Saudi Arabia.



The second scenario is that Saudi Arabia puts a lot of money into their current plans, and that the country actually does what it says it will over the next few decades. Implementing certain features, like no cars, 100% renewable energy generation, and vertical living, might definitely be possible. However, the project's size alone seems to make it impossible to complete.

We mentioned earlier that the Line is supposed to be the same height as the One World Trade Center, which was completed in about eight years. Saudi Arabia wants to construct a structure of the same height, even though that is still a reasonable timeframe., be that as it may, 170 kilometers long. Building a continuous strip of 2000 One World Trade Centers would be analogous to this. Additionally, considering that the undertaking consists of two of these lines, constructing four thousand of them would be equivalent. We would arrive at 32,000 years if we simply divided each by 8 years. Of course, Saudi Arabia would construct them much more quickly because they could begin working on multiple parts simultaneously, but it does a good job of illustrating the scale. In essence, it would take centuries to complete.

Another example: the 17-year construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China required approximately 40,000 workers. However, in comparison to The Line, it is minuscule at only 2.3 kilometers in length and 180 meters in height.

However, there is a third option:

    They may be able to come to an agreement given that they have already begun construction. At the outset, we inquired as to whether this would be the greatest megaproject ever undertaken by humans or a construction oversight costing a trillion dollars. However, there might be another choice.

Saudi Arabia could build it, but not to the insane lengths they had envisioned. Because the Line is constructed as 5-minute walk segments, they could basically construct the entire megaproject piece by piece. They could simply extend the length as needed, depending on demand.

Additionally, the project could be made much more realistic and simpler to construct by adjusting the Line's height. The whole idea of living vertically doesn't change, and all of the features could still be used with half the height. Even if the Line is built on a much smaller scale, it could become the first modern city without cars and introduce a completely new way of life to the world. Numerous efforts are being made to make cities more car-free all over the world. However, rather than completely eliminating automobiles, these have been restricted to lowering car use.

Since the automobile dominates most major cities, attempting to alter this is extremely difficult. They get to start all over again with The Line. It may be the first major city in the 21st century to have zero automobile trips. It is intended that a community's fundamental amenities can all be reached by foot. In the event that this is not the case, a proposed underground railway system could be used to travel the entire Line for longer distances.

By 2030, the first residents could be living in the proposed high-tech society, albeit on a much smaller scale. Which of these outcomes is more likely to occur?




What opinions do experts have regarding this insane project?

    Given the extremely short timeline, not many experts will concur that it is a project that can be completed. We have informed by Neom's chief urban planning officer, Antoni Vives: This is something I want to be clear about: Neom is a big, bold, complicated project that will be hard to complete. However, significant progress is being made, and it is exciting to see the vision come to life.

On the other hand, numerous outside experts are raising additional concerns.

Dezeen received the following statement from Princeton University architect Marshall Brown: To achieve the extremely minimal and singular character that the renderings suggest, there would need to be dealt with so many physical and environmental phenomena."

What do you think, then?

Will this project succeed in some way now that construction has begun?

In the future, will people actually live there, or will this project become an abandoned megaproject?