01New Future City
Back in 2017, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman unveiled the New Future City (Arabic: نيوم, NEOM) project, with the goal of turning the sandy western desert into a high-tech region. In January 2021, he proposed to build a zero-carbon building called "THE LINE" as part of saudi vision 2030.
Neom is a planned cross-border city in Tabuk province in northwestern Saudi Arabia. It is planned as a smart city and a tourist city. Located near the Red Sea, the Strait of Tiran and the borders of Egypt, Israel and Jordan, the area covers an area of 26,500 km2, with industrial and logistics areas and other areas, which is a major development project for Saudi Arabia to reduce its dependence on oil and attract overseas investment to diversify its economy. NEOM will feature hyper-connected cognitive towns, ports and corporate districts, research centers, sports and entertainment venues, and tourist destinations. As innovation hubs, entrepreneurs, business leaders and companies will research, incubate and commercialize new technologies and businesses in a pioneering way.
The "THE LINE" building was preliminarily designed by Morphosis Architects, founded by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne. "These designs for vertically stratified communities will challenge traditional flat cities and provide a model for nature conservation and the improvement of human living standards."
Introducing THE LINE in January 2022, Mohammed said that the smart cities of the future will directly address the growing challenges of human congestion, pollution, transportation and outdated infrastructure. THE LINE, which connects the Red Sea coast with the mountains and upstream valleys of northwest saudi Arabia, will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to continuously learn prediction methods to make life easier for residents and local businesses; It will be powered by 100% clean energy and feature an underground high-speed transportation system, rather than roads and cars.
"Why should we sacrifice nature for the sake of development? Why do seven million people die every year because of pollution? Why lose a million people a year in traffic accidents? Why should we accept wasting years of commuting?" the crown prince asked in his speech.
02 The face of the urban community of the future
"THE LINE" is a veritable smart linear city, with a total length of nearly 170km, only 200m wide, building heights of more than 500m, and can accommodate about 9 million people to live and live, located in the new future city of Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia, currently under construction, without cars, streets or carbon emissions.
As a people-centered technology campaign, the designers hope that the project will create a new urban living experience while protecting the surrounding natural environment as much as possible. It reinvents a new concept of urban development, depicting a blueprint for future urban innovation, and its design reflects the future of urban communities in an environment free of roads, cars and exhaust emissions. Like traditional cities, THE LINE prioritizes people's health and well-being over transportation and infrastructure. Therefore, the first element of the design consideration is to protect nature, followed by urban development, and will protect 95% of NEOM's land. It will feature a high-speed rail that will take no more than 20 minutes to get from one end of the Twin Towers to the other. According to the designer's vision, people are only 5 minutes walking distance from the facilities in THE LINE, and residents will have many opportunities to meet in their daily lives. The mild climate throughout the year will ensure that residents can enjoy the natural surroundings while walking. At the same time, the natural boundaries are extended to all open spaces, improving the ability of air to evolve, and there is a natural ventilation system in the city to ensure that residents can feel the natural atmosphere all year round. At THE LINE, without intensive infrastructure such as cars and roads, cities achieve zero carbon emissions; 100% renewable energy, including industrial operations.
The whole city will be vertically divided into three parts: the ground is a complete pedestrian area, without any roads, no cars, surrounded by greenery; The second floor is a service area such as commercial space. The third floor, located at the lowest level of the city, is the backbone structure of this linear city, belonging to the area of transporting goods and people. The planning of the ultra-high-speed transportation system allows people to reach any location along the "straight city" line in 20 minutes.
Unlike traditional designs, THE LINE's design will be fully digital and industrialization will be achieved through a significant improvement in building technology and manufacturing processes. The announcement of the THE LINE design means that it continues the design and development ideas of NEOM's flagship projects, such as OXAGON (Redefined Industrial and Innovation City) and TROJENA (which will provide the first global mountain tourism destination for outdoor ski resorts in the Gulf region of Saudi Arabia), as well as two subsidiaries of NEOM (energy, water and hydrogen subsidiary ENOWA and NEOM Technology and Digital Holdings).
The desert-facing side of the building is mirror-smooth, with residential, commercial, office, parks and schools, 95% of which are natural landscapes and operate entirely on renewable energy.
In order to create an ideal microclimate space, a lot of green open space is integrated into the city to achieve the best balance of sunlight, shade and natural ventilation, providing a more comfortable experience for people who live, work and travel here.
Two parallel mirror buildings make up a 105-mile-long futuristic city.
THE LINE will eventually accommodate a population of 9 million and covers an area of only 34 km2. This means that the infrastructure footprint is shrinking and the level of energy efficiency in urban operations is higher than ever. Maintain an ideal climate throughout the year, and residents can always throw themselves into the embrace of the surrounding nature; All facilities are available on foot in 5 minutes, and there is also a high-speed rail that keeps the end-to-end journey shorter than 20 minutes.
03 The thinking behind the technology rush
The essence of the human community is to expand and spread outward, so maintaining THE LINE requires a lot of regulation, which will be difficult to implement. Secondly, there is the problem of transportation, and the current technology cannot meet the needs of railway lines. To reach one end of the 170-kilometer-long city from the other end in 20 minutes, a speed of 318 mph (512 km/h) is required, which far exceeds the top speed of the current high-speed rail system. Hyper-loop trains (hyperloop trains, also known as hyperloops) may one day evolve to a speed of 318 mph, but current tests have reached 288 mph (463 km/h) without passengers. Not to mention that hyper-loop technology is at least a decade away from real-world implementation.
The thought of a linear city stretching 170 kilometers in the Saudi desert, with no roads or cars, but a future of underground transportation faster than any current system, sounds more like a dream than a viable project, and many infrastructure experts tend to agree. "The history of so-called mega-projects is not rosy." Stephen Wheeler, a landscape architect and environmental design professor at the University of California, Davis, argues that they are often not subject to economic conditions or other people's ideas about what should happen, as initial visionaries had hoped, or that the final cost far exceeds expectations. Despite its flashy exterior, making it a huge challenge to make it a reality, there's no denying that THE LINE is one of the most interesting and exciting infrastructure projects in the world for a long time.
The project began in the first quarter of this year, and the "first phase" will last until 2030, costing 1.2 trillion Saudi riyals (about 215 million yuan). In addition to government subsidies, potential funding sources include the private sector, as well as the expected IPO in New Future City in 2024. Faced with rapid population growth and a large number of young people employed, Prince Mohammed said the 170km-long city could create more than 380,000 jobs and add $48 billion to the country's GDP. By 2030, Saudi Arabia's population is expected to reach 50 million, more than half of which will be foreigners. Saudi Arabia currently has a population of less than 35 million.