Why Linear Cities Don't Work (5 Reasons)

[@baylenlucas8923]

Saudi Arabia is really playing catchup because Chile already went beyond cities and invented the linear country

[@gukediguh]

underrated comment

[@akaeron6472]

What about Australia's upside-down civilization? They are so advanced they ignore physics!! (This is a joke, much love to my mates in Aussie.

[@simmysims9209]

@@akaeron6472 lol

[@chrisstanford3652]

😅😂

[@teeletsetse445]

You beat me to it you bastard!😂😂😂

[@randombystander5324]

I actually lived in a "linearish" city before, the german city of Wuppertal. It developed in a linear form because it was formed from two independent citys (Barmen and Elberfeld) along the valley of the river Wupper. The river was essential during early industrialization as a power source for watermills, while the steep hills around the city made it hard to build there. So I speak from experience when I say, that a linear city is not efficient for transportation. While the linear form allows for some creative solutions for traffic, for example, Wuppertal is the only city I know of that successfully implemented a (suspended, hanging) monorail as the backbone for its public transportation (the Schwebebahn, since 1901, still working fine and suspended over the river, thus not taking up any valueable land), the downsides outweight the positives. Having just one line makes the Schwebebahn very vulnerable to complete shutdowns. Any kind of issue the stops a train immediately blocks everything. On top of that, streets in Wuppertal are always full of cars, because everybody is trying to get through the same road in the middle of the city and even on good days, it takes much longer to get around the city, because everything is much further apart than it would be in comparable cities that are more roundish. Also the main train station is right in the city center, which sounds good, but normally they are slightly off the historical centers to prevent the rails from getting into the way. Not possible there, instead the multiple raillines cut right through the middle of the city on its full lenghts. Living in the hills around the city means immediate car dependency. While there are buses, most of them run straight into the center to connect to the Schwebebahn, with the result that, to get to university, I was forced to take a 40 minute detour into one of the two city centers, even though the uni was just one hill over. A ten minute car trip but over an hour by foot. Tl;dr: Linear citys are terrible, because everybody tries to take the same route everywhere, everytime.

[@CharlieQuartz]

The publicists at Neom claim the structure can solve many of the issues with travel and congestion in a linear city by building it in walkable modules which should contain all the amenities necessary for daily living in a small distance. I'd be fascinated to know what the architects think those units should look like and how they approach construction of larger and less common amenities like concert halls and sports pitches. The idea they wouldn't expand that modular format to another dimension is baffling.

[@jan-lukas]

@@CharlieQuartz but then comes the commute, and it all fails apart. Most people don't commute to places in the walkable area around them

[@skarbuskreska]

@@CharlieQuartz they also claim that it will only take 20 min to get from one end of the line to the other, with technology that doesn't exist btw until now (think Musks tunnel and speedtrains). But even if this technology did exist, people don't pay attention, they say from one end to the other, noone talked of inbetween ( that way they don't exactly lie). Because the minute you want to get somewhere in between, you'd have to constantly stop the train at stations, which then would slow it down significantly, it would be a metro kind of thing. But yes, in their vision, you wouldn't want to go anywhere else, because ALL THAT YOU NEED! is in walking distance. Not all that you wish though I guess. It means to me, that you will be some kind of slave confined to a certain place and only the elite will fly around in their helis. Imagine you want to get out there, could you? With desert all around? Personally I think that it's a scam to collect money. Of course they will build something there to make it seem to investors like something's happening, but eventually they will take the money and invest it elsewhere on the stockmarket, gamble, then when all fails they will say oops, here's your money back, while all the time they have made extra cash with your money as it was in their hands not yours. The longer you think about this project and start to think about stuff that could go wrong (where does the garbage go, where is canalisation, how do they get drinking water there, isn't the big ass glass walls like a sail catching winds and therefore changing local weather and sandstorms and basically producing huge forces that might eventually shatter the glass? will the glass reflect the sun as a big ass magnifying glass and melt all the desert outside? how do you help the animals outside whos habitat you cut without them being able to cross? etc etc The solutions are all based on technolgy not exactly existant today, and as we have seen with Elon Musk who likes to think big, yes stuff is evolving, but it still takes more time.

[@hopejohnson6347]

@@CharlieQuartz They also don't account for human social life like marriages and families for example... I mean yes - one spouse can (maybe) live within walking distance of their place of employment, but what if the other partner works for a company almost at the other end of the city? It's absolutely ridiculous and would worsen commuting times instead of improving them. Or what if you lose your job? Is your apartment unit linked to your job and you have to vacate to outside of linear town for as long as you're unemployed? Do you have to move across the city if you find another job at another company? What about your children? Do they have to change where they go to school everytime you change your job?

[@JohnRay1969]

@@CharlieQuartzSince they only just this year started allowing live performances of pop music artists it would be premature to think it will continue. This is "the year of entertainment" but that's only "a year" they could stop it just as suddenly.

[@Videogamehistorian00]

There's a joke that architects are failed artists who can only draw in straight lines. I think the designers of Neom took that too literally.

[@uromvictor]

Horrible Joke

[@Samuel-ko9uv]

@@uromvictor lol why? It kind of is

[@pietervoogt]

@@uromvictor Great joke and probably true. Although half of the architects must be failed dictators. They love discipline and they hate anything playful and elegant. And they can't take a joke.

[@hybrit9881]

at least architects can earn a living

[@Akrafena]

at least we didnt become homeless and became interested in politics

[@KhorneBrzrkr]

I absolutely love when a "new" concept is not only discovered to be quite old, but are expressions of the exact problem the "new" idea seeks to overcome.

[@Mr.Ekshin]

I have to seriously question the sanity of people who think centralized government planning should run their lives. Imagine your life being managed with all the diligence, efficiency and care we see at the DMV. That city looks like a giant prison. The only way out is to jump off.

[@Bustermachine]

​@@Mr.Ekshin I mean, despite them being chronically understaffed, I've found the DMV and even the IRS to be more helpful than their private counterparts, my car dealership, and Intuit Turbo Tax. You also have the dread 'HOAs' which seem to combine the worst parts of the public and private management into a single suburban nightmare experiment. Though I do get your point. Government should be a facilitator for cities. I.e. it should set the general rules by which cities will build themselves, rather than enforcing a rigid vision, and seek to solve the problems that are beyond an individual municipalities scale to manage.

[@reddit-it3414]

It’s inevitable that it’ll grow outward. Imagine a overos ruin owning a section of the city then paying billions to create a putter city on either side. Also, imagine daily laborers needing housing and putting up shacks near some of the city’s entrances along the wall. It’ll look like the District 9 movie in no time.

[@silkysh1t]

⁠@@Bustermachinethere’s private dmvs in Minnesota and it is almost comical how much better they are than the public ones. Turbo tax is not the private version of the IRS (although it works quite well). What kind of cuck/masochist are you to defend the irs and the dmv? Hopefully I didn’t miss any satire

[@centariprime9959]

Sounds like socialism/communism. Neither has worked without authoritarian rule, loss of freedoms and the deaths of many. Yet people keep pointing to it as the solution.

[@Chaotic_Pixie]

This makes me think of my university campus but in the opposite way. When they did massive expansion in the 1970s, they didn't put in sidewalks. They then came back in a few years later and simply paved the paths thousands of students had carved. A few are straight... two curve around ponds... many go in places that don't make sense to outsiders but if you lived and attended school there, they made perfect sense. Many criss crossing diagonal paths connecting the dorms in the middle ring of existence to the inner circle of academic buildings, libraries, and offices, as well as the outer ring of parking, local businesses, and parks. And despite a robust public transit system of busses, most students and faculty walked within the central campus because it was quicker. And it was quicker because the school decided it made sense to pave where humans naturally walked.

[@aogasd]

I claim this good energy 😌😌

[@dawnelder9046]

McMahen park in London Ontario had an opposite situation. Every 15 years or so some new idiot will redesign it. The first version had a lively cast iron fence around it, with entrances at logical parts. Great place for small children as it kept them from running onto the busy street. Also had a full pool, with a fence of course and a wading pool. Play ground equipment as well. A few benches and picnic tables. Very functional. Lots of shade trees. London gets very hot and humid in the summer. Then the first idiot remove the pool. The next nearest pool was in the projects and dangerous. Second worst project in the city The next one was a 45 minute walk for a adult. The second idiot took away the iron fence and replaced it with short wood posts and wire. Children could get under it is seconds. The adults chasing them tripped over the wire and fell on their face while listening to squealing breaks. They also cut down a bunch of shade trees and replaced then with little trees. About 4 years later the wire fence was gone. For the best. The trees on one side, after years, at least provided nice shade along the one sidewalk surrounding the park. Enter the last idiot. Cut down the trees, about the only nice part of the park left. Instead of building paths along the pre existing paths, designed an pretty, but useless path design. So what had been a great park at one time became horrible over time by idiots improving it.

[@micheleberaudo5629]

They are called desire paths

[@emmapeel8163]

@@dawnelder9046.. that's pretty sad. it's intentional destruction of a community.

[@rodjacksonx]

@@emmapeel8163 - More like negligent destruction. I'm sure most of these planners thought they were God's gift to the community, and that they were doing everyone a favor by laying out things in the "right" way.

[@Arxareon]

The funniest thing to me regarding the main focus being on fast transportation is that the city is a line.. you can immediately cut the maximal travel time between any 2 points in the city by half if you just make it a circle.. compact it further and you end up with a design of concentric circles where the inside is also filled, it takes up less space and most of the entire area might actually become walkable, but definitely cyclable which wouldn't be feasible if you had to travel from one end of the line to the other for instance. You'd also get a city center as a bonus.

[@stevdor6146]

In a line, the wealthy live near the center and the poor are crammed into the endpoints. Its like someone took a 2d cross-section of stadium seating

[@Arxareon]

@@stevdor6146 oh there won't be poor people living in here believe me. They'd never afford it in the first place if they would even be allowed. If someone becomes poor while already living there, I could (sadly) bet on in that they'd be deported. If you meant the workers, service people and the "lower class" rich, possible, but the could and would live in the centre or their own district/neighborhood if it was a filled circle anyway. 🤷‍♂️

[@bananasaur5209]

@@Arxareon If there aren't poor people living there then who would do regular work?

[@prashanthb4565]

@@stevdor6146 Ba Sing Se

[@MrFlarespeed]

Thats a great idea, then add a bunch of connections between the concentric circles and... Wait a minute. This is starting to sound familiar... Almost like a regular city with weirdly shaped buildings.

[@LegalEagle]

I'm sure behind the scenes Stewart was really thinking "IT WON'T WORK BECAUSE IT'S OBVIOUSLY STUPID"

[@stewarthicks]

Get out of my head! I'm a polite midwesterner.

[@Mix1mum]

This is great, you two crack me up. Thank you both for what you do. You both have made fantastic channels.

[@berenscott8999]

I'll give them 1 km before they realise it won't work.

[@domtef347]

I think this project is a misdirection.... It's not about building the city it's about building a means of physically hiding human rights abuses and dubious financial mechanations. It's like what Amazon did to the treatment of workers by shifting the same old toxic b******* into warehouses except in a more centralized and equally dystopian way. This city building project always makes me wonder where they're going to hide the incinerators that burn the bodies of the undesirables.

[@jeandanielodonnncada]

The channel @AdamSomething does a great job at calling stupid things stupid. But this calm analysis is great too.

[@yunekoVT]

imagine trying to get all the sand out of that city from all the sandstorms they get in saudi arabia or how fast a single fire could spread or how catastrophic a single explosion would be within that cramped city

[@hannibalbarca7707]

Or a deadly disease that spreads, easily quarantined by "phases" or sections. Literally this is a high tech prison

[@Pluvillion]

@@hannibalbarca7707- segregation between classes too, rich people get it live at the top near the trees, the rest live in the bottom.

[@michaellin4553]

I don't like sand.

[@hannibalbarca7707]

@@Pluvillion Like the Titanic

[@kevinpratt-ge5ye]

What could go wrong? 😂😂😂

[@troybaxter]

Here’s one of the issues that a linear city has that is often neglected: transportation redundancy. You are confining everything to a select few transportation lines, and it doesn’t take much for it to all ultimately fail. The advantage of sprawling cities is that by and large, you can always get to your destination, you just may have to go out of your way to get there. In a line city, if all lines are broken, then you are stuck. And in the case of a city over 100 miles long, you can guarantee such a failure to occur.

[@cmasterson]

So you mean to tell me in 2023 no one can sit down and figure out transport with a projected max city size and make it work? The issue with modern cities is that they grew over 200 years. Prior they didn’t know the city size and didn’t plan for millions to live in the city and the city to continue to expand. Starting from scratch and knowing what the max population will be takes that out the questions. They have heat maps of where the most would be and the different modes of transportation. It’s not like getting on a bus and the bus making a stop every stop. I’m sure it will work like an elevator and express elevators. Some buildings will take you to the middle of the tower and then you switch elevators to get to a specific floor. It works the same.

[@chaser1775]

I disagree. With the height of the structure each floor could have a transportation track/form. That’s 100 ish tracks which offer redundancy.

[@MrAapasuo]

@@chaser1775 you do realise each of those 100 tracjs also need stations to each "block" if they want to allow all the citizens to travel to every block and all those tracks and trains take space away from other things its not impossible, but what most are saying is that it would be extremely impractical to run that especially as someone has to fund the maintaining and upkeeping of all these

[@onradioactivewaves]

Sir.... this is the cricket jello line.....you want yours, or not?

[@kylemilford8758]

The main selling point is everything you could need is less than 5 minutes away walking distance. The city just repeats over and over all the way down the line

[@OverlySarcasticProductions]

Imagine setting out to design a linear city to maximize efficiency and then accidentally reinventing a grid plan from first principles. -B

[@MrFinepixa]

Imagine finding Blue here while watching my casual architect content.

[@RK-cj4oc]

Blue make a vid about this please.

[@justmoritz]

Username checks out

[@maxsager139]

To understand these strangely shaped and closed city phenomena, we need to be able to think with the same mind as the ruling elites. If y ou were a dict ator of a country with 10 million people: How would you confine the population to avoid social uprisings, or to expl oit a sector and ki ll thousands to red uce the popu lation, or to sub due the health and freedoms of its inhabitants? Well, the answer is easy: The Linear City or The Floating City in the ocean, the perfect luxury jail for potential troublemakers seeking freedom. You just have to listen to what they say at the W orld Econo mic Fo rum on their KZbin channel. They stated that the main problem of the future is to AVOID SOCIAL REVOLTS AND OBTAIN SOCIETIES OBE DIENT AND SUBMI SSION to govern ment orders. The philosopher Yu val No ah Har ari said that people are wrong to claim that they have freedom or free will.

[@NextToToddliness]

Yeah, it's almost like human culture has been built on top of prior knowledge... 🙄

[@BeenJamin66]

My main concern is the fact that 9 million plus people would be entrapped in an object, like a cage. Even if you can see out and go out of the box, you are still aware that you are surrounded by four walls at all times. I have no doubt that this would would throw off the psychological state of the residents. Essentially, it is a four sided wall blocking you off from the outside at all times.

[@justshane5270]

How does this differ from NYC as an example? NYC would have multiple layers before one could get outside

[@cinnamonstar808]

YOUR MINDSET YOUR TRIGGERS - dont push them on others.... its like the last 500 years taught you nothing !

[@sillymesilly]

@@justshane5270 it differs because in NYC you can go in all four directions. You have rivers, parks, you are not trapped in a linear city with hellscape outside the walls.

[@BeenJamin66]

@@sillymesilly right on

[@punchcat0736]

Because you can leave and have some land . What’s wrong with difference

[@westsidewheelmen]

My grandmother told my brothers and me she was taking us to an underground city, when we were little kids, and this was about 1977. We were fascinated, and had no idea what wonders awaited us. turned out to be the Glendale Galleria.

[@SurvivedaReset]

well it's a large shopping mall w rooms with beds.

[@coco805]

Have you seen Snowpiercer? It's a movie/TV show about a postapocalyptic train-city, and many of the problems of living in a linear city are inadvertently explored. I think it would feel claustraphobic to live in one for sure!

[@Game_Hero]

train-cities can be great, especially with other public transits alongside it and even more, when they're not a freaking line.

[@coco805]

@@Game_Hero Snowpiercer is a fictional story about people that live on a city that is also a train, not a train-centric city. But I agree with you.

[@execjio1142]

That arabian project most certainly is aimed at rich people or people thr governemnt is planing to make rich. Meaning they will have all kinds of distractions accessable both in the line, but also outside and worldwide. The surely also present low income workers etc though...

[@Game_Hero]

@@coco805 So THAT's what you meant by a "train-city", I never thought it was litterally a train, goes to show how insane it is :D

[@luclin92]

@Exec Jio what I find funny, is that the whole concept of the Line is just perfect for a dystopian city in a story, where the rich live on the top while the poor live in the darkness below. Barely seeing the sun

[@Ysckemia]

there's a manga author named Tsutomu Nihei, he is known for BLAME! and Knight of Sidonia. he used to study architecture before to become a mangaka, and architecture remains one of the main "character" of his stories. and now thanks to this video, i understand better his goal when he draws hyperobjects. this is fascinating.

[@jessiejanson1528]

"blame!" is really an amazing story. For anyone curious the general concept is "humans made AI robots to create and remodel cities but a virus got into the system and caused them to begin to build out of control, gathering materials, rebuilding, and building, eventually errors piled up and they started creating flawed structures, staircases that just never stop, ones that are upside down etc, these buildings are on a scale that reach to the skies. But what made all of this worse for humanity was the AI security system which was designed to keep trespassers out, as a result the AI cities began to push humans further and further away giving them less room until their was none left. After which humans had to try to survive and find places to live, in the gaps and errors of the AIs design where it didnt patrol. it contains little dialog and you learn about things when the MC does and you have to pay attention to things you see not just quick skim read or you will miss about 95% of the content. There was a website that let you add notes onto the pages themselves and there were countless interesting observations people made like 'wow i didnt think of that, but that makes total sense' and it really added so much more to the story, its was also quite nice when you could figure it out on your own. The scale of the world the story takes place in is almost literally impossible to imagine. One interesting aspect of the story, which i suppose is a small spoiler, but something that might convince people to read it is... .... The authors human art is OFF. people look weird. but this has a REASON... .... For a chunk of the story i had assumed the author was just bad at drawing people, but as it turns out people arnt actually 'human' anymore thanks to generations of mutations and implants etc. There is an anime called "Blame!" Which covers one small arc from the manga, you can find it on netflix. its not entirely true to the manga, but it was altered to be wrapped up in one season and if i recall, the villains were also altered a bit. If you find the anime even the slightest bit interesting its worth reading.

[@Ysckemia]

@@jessiejanson1528 thanks for the generous input 😂👌 i never viewed the characters as "badly drawn" (actually i found them very interestingly drawn). since nihei went to the usa to study architecture, i view his style as a hybrid between japanese and occidental cultures. in Knights of Cydonia, he evolves to a more """consensual""" anime style (but still very identifiable as his'). maybe because there's a shit ton of characters in that story.

[@keiichimorisato98]

​@Jessie Janson I see now where FFXIV got the inspiration for one of the game's dungeons, check out a VOD of the Smileton. In the dungeon, an AI construction system glitches out and starts building random structures.

[@gregor2853]

Here in the Netherlands we have villages that were build on or next to dikes or canals and are thus one line. These "lintdorpen" are notorious for having bad traffic problems, as the traffic grew but the villages couldn't expand in width. Prime example is Standskanaal in Groningen, it's supposed to be the longest linear village in Europe with 16km!

[@jannetteberends8730]

I lived in one for some months (Kiel Windeweer, 8 km/ 4.2mi.). It’s not bad in the summer, but in the winter it’s inhabitable imo. Now I live beside the Lidl, and opposite the Moroccan bakery and Chinese restaurant/snackbar and Turkish butcher. 😀

[@RK-cj4oc]

@@jannetteberends8730 So Dutch people dont own any bussineses in your village.

[@localareakobold9108]

yeah, cars are a problem, we just need bikes or public transport

[@jannetteberends8730]

@@RK-cj4oc the owners are Dutch, only another culture. And there is one original Dutch shop owner, he owns the bicycle shop. 😁

[@RK-cj4oc]

@@jannetteberends8730 " only another culture" Then they are not Dutch.

[@sandytrimble5081]

What a dystopian concept - from the extreme lack of sunshine to the idea of living in a prison with massive walls and no personal transportation or ability to leave. This is madness.

[@vxcnzz]

Woke liberal democracy is a dystopian hell that you can't escape from for more than 80% of the planet.

[@milicazuglic8914]

👏

[@DJKinney]

Islam very much prepared a mind for this type of slavery.

[@VinceP1974]

@@DJKinney Especially true that they need outside help to build the thing. And outsiders are more than happy to sell out and help them.

[@DJKinney]

@@VinceP1974 what outsiders? I didn't see any Irish guys riveting away on this. Maybe Indonesian maybe Philippines

[@essaboselin5252]

There are many small cities/large towns in the mountains which are basically linear because they grew up along a river through a valley. They are long and narrow, and trust me, you don't want to be driving through one when there's any sort of accident, fire, parade or any other event. The narrow footprint means there's only so many roads, and everyone else is trying to get around whatever is causing the disruption with you.

[@НинадаТарапицца]

Your thinking is old fashioned and somewhat obsolete. The idea is not to "drive trough" but to take the metro. Public transport is much more economical and eco-friendly (runs on electricity among other things). So, you probably won't even own a car which reduces your carbon footprint even more. And I suppose, the will be emergency doors for exiting this "horizontal skyscraper", so you can escape to the desert if you have to. After all, this is not a gorge with vertical rocks and nowhere to go. And with modern electronics and sensors, there shouldn't be any serious fires and such. And since there will be no petrol tanks and gas stations in the city, the risk of a serious fire will be around 0. Prevention, prevention, prevention.

[@essaboselin5252]

@@НинадаТарапицца And public transport doesn't use the same limited infrastructure? A linear city has limited space; there are limited routes for any transport. An incident anywhere will create a backup.

[@НинадаТарапицца]

@@essaboselin5252 A railway's capacity is much higher than a highway. That is to say you can transport much more people in a railway than on a highway with a car. The pros of a linear city - you have the metro on your doorstep. You can go left or right, depending on where you wanna go. And can be there fast (I presume the trains will be no more than 5 min. apart and have at least 2 metro tunels in one direction. After all, 9 mln people to move around is no joke). Well, if there is a terrorist attack... that will suck. But other than that a linear city it is very transport-friendly. The only thing I don't like is the height of this city. Way too high and quake unfriendly, as today's event show.

[@dans9463]

Oregon's main highway seems like a continuous line of small towns.

[@RealLifeIronMan]

@@dans9463 yes but they are much wider and the largest highway follows the coast.

[@Taramushi]

Watching this episode, especially the 'Road Town', feels like a surreal alternate history. As if it were dreamed up for some analog horror, like Monument Mythos by Alexkansas. The idea that seemingly crackpot ideas from the past could have become the norm. Those big, bold, conceptual, and ultimately doomed "megaprojects" that we know wouldn't have worked, but we can imagine a bizarre and uncanny world where they were actually massive successes.

[@greggv8]

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe where the linear design is the default city type, the Saudi-equivalents are being laughed at for proposing "Square City".

[@ProfessorJayTee]

Here in Japan, most of our cities started out following train lines. Then they expanded organically outward from each station, from where people utilized bicycles, buses and cars. More from the most-useful stations, less from the others. Most of them still have their initial, linear structure visible on old maps. But the biggest station-centers formed large "globules" along each line, and once multiple rail lines came together, each globule expanded separately until they merged. Now they look much like other cities, but the transportation is still awesome.

[@Mrx-gd8wt]

Don’t you have cities first, then followed by railroads?

[@aoe4_kachow]

@@Mrx-gd8wt no or else you’ll have to tear down homes to build train tracks

[@camsterdam3896]

​@@Mrx-gd8wt railroads always come first, major cities may be waypoints along those rails but, new cities are born on those rails. Mainly due to people traveling

[@eratosthenes8004]

@@camsterdam3896I learned the JR companies would buy up land along the planned rail line stations. Once the line’s complete, they would then lease/sell the land to businesses knowing that they’ll become hotspots.

[@thisisaname5589]

For some countries, perhaps they need to be more efficient with land. For us in America, we are literally drowning in land. Thousands of square miles of basically uninhabited land waiting to be used. I see no reason whatsoever why we should change anything here.

[@SadRengo]

Its nice to see another view of why linear cities dont work. I remember watching a video about a social architect saying that: 1. A city that long is going to affect the wild life, separating the animals that use to roam the dessert. 2. Making basicaly a big mirror in the dessert is not just going to make it the biggest microwave in the world, it also will cook everyting at the sides of the city 3. It can create a perfect box for sickenss. People being so compact will make it easier to spread diseases

[@themoretruthfultruth]

I roam the desserts every time I go in the grocery store then sigh and walk away because I don't need the calories.

[@twells138]

Urban planners never fail to un-impress me with their ability to not live in the world of the living.

[@flytrapYTP]

There's too many god damn negatives in this sentence.

[@twells138]

@@flytrapYTP I know, right?

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

Urban planners never fail to un-impress me with their ability to not live in the world of the living. Urban planners ![always fail to un-impress me] with their ability to not live in the world of the living. Urban planners ![always ![successfully un-impress me]] with their [ability to not live in the world of the living]. Urban planners ![always ![successfully ![impress me]]] with their [ability to ![live in the world of the living]]. Urban planners ![always ![successfully ![impress me]]] with their ![ability to [live in the world of the living]]. Urban planners always fail to impress me with their inability to live in the world of the living.

[@sgtkort97]

No way that was planned by serious urbanists

[@twells138]

@@sgtkort97 It's under constructrion.

[@havedalDK]

When I think of a successful linear city, the one that comes to mind is the city of Wuppertal in Germany. The city is built around the Wupper river, but the steep hills around the city forced the city to expand along the river, which is why they decided to build their public transport on the river itself. What do we learn from this? I guess that nature plays a huge part in making a successful somewhat linear city.

[@tim..indeed]

Yet even Wuppertal had to expand onto the hills to actually become a proper city.

[@effuah]

And still the main part of Wuppertal is more less round and then has additional centres, also since Wuppertal was created by unifying smaller cities.

[@lpereira300]

@@effuah all big cities were created by unifying smaller cities. For example, until around the early 19th century Brooklynn was a different city from New York

[@PeterAuto1]

at the Rhine are also many linear towns sandwiched between the mountains and the river.

[@Default78334]

@@lpereira300 And the city of Wuhan was formed in 1927 through the merger of three different cities (Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang) at the confluence of two rivers (The Chang/Yangzi/Yangtze and the Han).

[@sWEEc]

I can't stop dreading the disaster that building will lead to. Imagine the amount of molten sand on either side of that. I can't be the only one who thinks that a mirror the height of a building isn't a good idea in a desert.

[@flytrapYTP]

It's also pretty unsustainable in the one place where you're guaranteed to have a ton of sand scratching up your mirror.

[@julianbraunbeck7632]

the height of a **skyscraper**

[@cassinipanini]

@@julianbraunbeck7632 a sandscraper

[@SoMuchFacepalm]

Cheaper than landmines. It IS a wall, after all, and borders can exist within a country.

[@loftyradish6972]

I'm thinking about the number of birds that will fly into it and die. Then they will be cooked by the mirror in the desert.... maybe that is how the city will have self-sustained fresh cooked meals that use only renewable sources for cooking heat....

[@garyblack8717]

The more I think about Neom, the more it seems like a giant prison. Only the rich will be able to live near the coasts at the ends of it, and as you get further inland, hours train rides to anywhere other than the cold sterile architecture of the city, and the harsh desert outside, the more squalid conditions will become. Imagine living where you have to wait for your annual vacation just to go outside of your building? It really seems to me like a dystopian hell-scape in the making.

[@lepidoptera9337]

Guess who lives in Martha's Vineyard and on the Pacific Coast in California? Dude. Get real. :-)

[@Hello-bs8dn]

Yep literal dystopia

[@mennonis]

I think a city like that would indeed only be possible with a authoritarian, if not totalitarian regime. And given that you can not navigate the city autonomously, it would be very easy to control the masses. Just put your government at one end of the line, in a nice secured tower or whatever.

[@wilh3lmmusic]

And that’s why it’s terrible

[@arribalaschivas91]

And that’s how you get Snowpiercer

[@mglenadel]

At one end? You put it beside the city, a few kilometers off the main line, with access only to authorized personnel.

[@themarmaladematt]

You feel like you’re not easily controlled? Do you have a blue and yellow flag on your car?

[@sibimathen1451]

I would stay clear of a Saudi Consulate or embassy after a comment like that!

[@Jack-fw4mw]

On the diminishing returns on efficiency, we can look at elevators in tall buildings for an analogy. As the system gets larger, you need to dedicate more space just to accommodate the various services needed to keep it all connected.

[@execjio1142]

But to be fair... unlike with really high and fast going elevators, horizontal transportation is pretty easy to get right, needs almost no extra space for safety featude this and that and most stuff will be provided from the outside anyway. Also when there is one or multipple walk and cycling lanes along the line, those also can always be a backup for transport. Like... ebike... both for people and stuff.

[@execjio1142]

Or small electric buses... automatic or driven by somebody

[@LilyLewis771]

I cannot imagine how claustrophobic it would feel to be hemmed in by walls a city block on either side of you. “Human focused” yeah right.

[@Vannabee13]

Considering the city would be in a desert, it's actually not so bad. Still I think a circular design is better than a straight line. Makes it faster to access different parts of the city instead of having to travel the full length.

[@jacaredosvudu1638]

@@TheSighphiguy do you have a brain?

[@itsonlyxmabloxburg]

It’s literally 200 meters wide… and even if you don’t like it go outside of the line and go to other cities

[@jacaredosvudu1638]

@@itsonlyxmabloxburg problem is: what cities? Its in THE MIDDLE of the desert, there are miles and miles of nothing and the sand surrounding the line is ungodly hot bacause of mirrors

[@itsonlyxmabloxburg]

@@jacaredosvudu1638 There is a huge airport, roads and other cities in neom like trojena,oxagon and sindalah or you can go to the capital riyadh. Trust me i live in Saudi Arabia and there’s lots of villages on the road sometimes.

[@philopharynx7910]

When you base a city around one set of linear modes of transit, one large accident can break all connectivity. Maintenance brings similar issues. With a grid, you can route around anything.

[@Josh-yr7gd]

The linear city concept reminds me of the movie Snowpiercer, where a society of people lived on a train. This gives an example of how a linear city could turn bad really fast. People of lower economic status, little influence, minimal skillsets or people who are just "undesirable" for whatever reason, can literally be trapped in one part of city (train) with no way of escape. I don't see how anything good can come from this in the long run.

[@slthbob]

You mean like the trainwrecks that populate the beehives and scream how crappy it is... while bus tickets to paradise are sold online... but their beehive addiction will keep them from even knowing how...

[@marbledoughnut7519]

One of the most undarated comment here

[@Icetea-2000]

God, everyone immediately salivating at the thought of projecting all their favorite dystopia fantasies onto this is so obnoxious to me. No, there won’t be any lower classes as slums on this, ffs it’s their shiny new city to show to the world, designed from the ground up. How would anyone be able to afford to live there as a minimum wage worker? You’re acting like this is somehow supposed to be some kind of ark, disconnected from the rest of the world, when the income of the residents will definitely result in them being able to travel or conduct international business. This isn’t shut off from the rest of the world. And you’re all forgetting that saudi arabia WANTS people to see this, they want to make themselves seen with these vanity projects. Because that’s all this is, if it turns out anywhere as dystopian as you describe it, it would fail. Because the sole point of this is to better the international image of saudi arabia. They’d rather axe the whole project than have something that hurts marketing their country

[@slthbob]

@@Icetea-2000 Friend... call it what you will... condos or government housing... those that can will and do... will not want to live beside those that cant wont and dont... and vice versa my dude

[@snowyhudson975]

@@Icetea-2000 well, all you say is important. but ... give it a hundred years. snowpiercer. it's just time, man. give it a lot of time. time will ruin everything. the oil is useless. no more wealth. tourism crashes because they're just not the UAE. no, seriously, Saudi arabia will not only not be rich forever, but it also won't even exist. it's a made-up country, anyway, with a make-believe "royal" family who were put into place by Shaddam to control the spice at its source. in the fullness of time, the fremen will upend it all. MUA-DEEB!

[@Bnio]

I love how a lot of these proposals make quick access to nature a selling point, yet the entire concept is a giant middle finger to nature and organic ways of adapting to growth.

[@matthewsteele5229]

100%. Nature as nothing but a commodity

[@TheSultan1470]

Oh really?

[@-E42-]

exactly- it is complete nonsense, illogical, violent, brutal, dumb.. really, I lack words to describe how stupid this is.

[@josephvanpraet1400]

Human cities are probably the least organic thing on earth anyway so...

[@trapezium6376]

​@@matthewsteele5229nature as nothing but publicity

[@williambolton4698]

I'm really surprised that Cumbernauld in Scotland didn't get a mention. It was designed as a linear city. The plan was to build the town centre (which actually got constructed) as a linear mix of shops, offices, local government administration building, etc, over 4 storeys with a car park on the roof and a 4 lane road running under the building for cars and buses. The intention was to build communities which would be no more than a 10 minute walk from the town centre. As the population grew, new neighborhoods would be built and the town centre building would extend in linear fashion to accommodate the larger population. It didn't work. Not least because the authorities forgot to check the pre-war record of unregistered coal mines which pockmarked the area, so the communities had to be built much further from the town centre than originally intended. They had to then link the communities to the centre by roads which turned the area into a nightmarish maze. Add to that the brutalist architectural style of the town centre which won "Ugliest building of the year award" in the UK for a few years (such an award does exist) and you have a perfect example of the arrogance of "top-down" town planning by clever know-all's who don't understand how little they actually know. 20th Century Planning and Architecture has a shameful roll-call of "professionals" who destroyed the communities they grew from rather than improve them. Yes there were slums, yes they had to be improved but the level of arrogant, patronizing sterility that has been inflicted on our communities is utterly shameful. It's interesting that a mega-rich autocrat is imposing his will on his country almost 100 years after the same mistakes were made in the west.

[@TheJimprez]

There is linear, then there is LINEAR... Shopping strips are linear, but not that long. THIS CITY, is a hundred miles long. NOT the same deal at all. Just about every city in North America, built along a railroad started off linear. The just didn't END that way.

[@supercellex4D]

@@TheJimprez There's a difference between taking the easy and obvious path of building a town as a bunch of amenities around a travel path and forcing people to live on some arbitrary line because dumbass city planners said so

[@spcrowe]

Sounds a perfect scenario for Saudi

[@7thsealord888]

Neom is one of those ideas that looks nifty inside your head, and awesome in Power Point. You might even make this design ""work" within a city-sim game. As a dystopian setting in fiction, definite possibilities exist. As a horizontally-aligned "dungeon" in a role-playing game, it could be wild. For anything approaching Real Life, I just aint seeing it. The main thing coming to my mind is, what happens in the event of a disaster or a major accident? Most cities have enough network interconnection that there are 'workarounds' if something bad happens in any specific locale. In general, utilities and transport will remain functioning, perhaps not as efficiently but they will still be there for the most part. For Neom, it looks like an "All Or Nothing" proposition - in a major 'event', either the entire city will remain functional, or none of it will.

[@75aces97]

My first thought when I first heard about Neom was, what if you need to evacuate it, as in the event of fire or who knows what?

[@czu4877]

As an Illinoisan, i appreciate the Chicago comparisons. Very easy for my simple brain to understand.

[@ecognitio9605]

Illiniosan sounds like what you'd call the residents of another planet 😂

[@defeatSpace]

I prefer Illinese

[@MichaelfromtheGraves]

the typical block width example was pretty inaccurate though

[@ntatenarin]

LOL, true! When he said the width was a Chicago block, I'm like, "I got you!"

[@ding9633]

​@@defeatSpace Illinoisese

[@mfaizsyahmi]

There are urban places in real life that starts to look linear (e.g. the Northeastern Megalopolis) but they come together from multiple centers, and as such also have grid and radial aspects to them individually. Adam Something IIRC makes one simple example that exposes a critical flaw of this concept: one train breaks down and the entire thing grinds to a halt.

[@Miketz]

The lack of a city centre won't be an issue for long, I suspect. Such a large population would require the breaking up of the city into smaller "towns" with local councils. (either officially, or unofficially) and the linear stratification of social class will eventually create rich suburbs and ghettos with no way to prevent or avoid interaction. It'll be a pretty expensive social experiment.

[@TheJimprez]

Just like all of those Amalgamated cities all over North America. Suburbs being engulfed by the main town and each having their own downtown core. Where I live, used to be 5 or 6 cities, with Quebec city being the main one. Now, those cities are called "arondissements", or Neighborhoods, and each have their own identities, markets, clubs and bars, etc... Plus local public service hubs, and locally elected people in charge. It was MORE efficient for things like snow removal when they were separated, but the administration of the Urban Community is easier now with everything centralized. Some things got better, some things got worst. But, instead of being 250,000 people, Quebec city is now close to 850,000 pop and has a MUCH higher budget to spend on BIG projects that could never have happened before. We are building a tramway system and a tunnel (maybe) to link both shores of the St-Lawrence, which could never have been possible when every mayor wanted to pull the blanket to their side.

[@bloodyidit4506]

it'll kill loads of people tbh.

[@austin-purnell]

totally. imagine living smack in the middle, and on the bottom floors.

[@bloodyidit4506]

@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez A city full of tall buildings doesn't make for a city that can be well repaired. If a city is only comprised of tall buildings, many will be impossible to repair when they get screwed up due to sheer workload. There is a reason why we don't make this sort of thing.

[@julittok]

@@TheJimprez If this ultra planned project ends up divided into ghettos and rich people areas it means that we humans are hopelessly incapable of creating an egalitarian society even at its smallest expression. I think we are dumb enough but it would be sad to witness.

[@MightyJabroni]

The biggest flaw is that linear cities, especially if taken to the max like "the line" (a depressingly dull name, BTW), are basically one big chokepoint for all kinds of highly disruptive failures and/or catastrophes at almost every point of their design. Also, population density will be through the roof. So good, old miscalculation on that front could have compounding effects really fast, courtesy to the chokepoint design.

[@joecope9935]

I once read an interesting description of a wall city called "Terminus". It was situated near the north pole on Mercury and was built on massive rails and moved just fast enough that it was always just beyond the point of sunrise. This kept it in the relatively habitable zone between the freezing night side of the planet and the blast furnace of the day side. The top of the city was high enough that it would get hit by the sun peeking over the horizon and was covered with solar energy collectors that powered the city and kept it moving on the rails.

[@jackhayes3055]

Kim Stanley Robinson's '2312'. An amazingly fun sci-fi, full of creativity and action. One of my favourites!

[@Jimmehftw]

imagine some technical error happening on the rail and the entire population just vaporises.

[@MikeySkywalker]

In the walking dead?

[@marcusmccool160]

@@MikeySkywalker the walking dead take place on Mercury's north pole?

[@joecope9935]

@@jackhayes3055 yes. Though I read it in Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars. If you liked 2312 and haven't read the Mars trilogy I highly recommend it!

[@Andrea-lj4jg]

I'll tell you guys, the more I look at those distopian futuristic projects, the more I love my little tuscan city I've lived in all my life

[@icandanceifiwantto]

I’d love to see your take as an architect and a very clever person on Walt Disney’s dream to build a completely autonomous perfect city that EPCOT never managed to live up to.

[@bobbylox]

I'd love to see that, too!

[@dlf_uk]

A little disappointed there was no discussion of the impracticality of the shape in the context of relation to existing settlements, and how it leads to existing people living on the line being displaced, potentially forcefully, simply because the arbitrary line layout is prioritised over everything else

[@ElysianAura]

The Line can only work in hypotheticals, imagine if just one general service had protests or poor conditions, you'd put additional stress on nearby neighboring services, both the roads and that area's service. Like one undesired hospital suddenly forces an entire chunk to a new chunk

[@lizziesmusicmaking]

The Line always makes me wonder: what happens when that one transportation route goes down for some reason? Movement comes to a grinding halt, and you can't get where you need to go. There's no alternate route. Every time the power goes out, if it is an electric train, or every time there's a bad accident, if you're using cars. Also, your water, sewer, power etc is probably carried in a single line, and any break to that cuts services to everything beyond that break and you can't reroute stuff. It may be efficient, but it isn't resilient if anything goes wrong.

[@JoshuaWise1994]

You would obviously build redundancy into the lines from the beginning.

[@distinguishedallureproduct879]

This is me thinking science fiction type with no architecture or engineering background. But I would think a good solution would be say where that down Powerline or car wreck or issue happen, the ground opens up and "swallows" that incident that way all emergencies and city services can be housed underground and fix it without disrupting life above.

[@lizziesmusicmaking]

@@distinguishedallureproduct879 That sounds fairly complicated to do with current tech. Honestly, I think just building a normal city makes way more sense. If it ain't broke, don't invent a new thing that brings a whole host of new problems we then have to figure out how to fix.

[@distinguishedallureproduct879]

@@lizziesmusicmaking very complicated, idk how it would work, I'm thinking a mechanism that literally elevates downward into a "industrial/ city work zone" under the city (to reduce pollution and increase beauty and QoL) and once the "incident" is contain, the elevator goes back to ground level and life on that stretch of line continues. That's the only way I can think of it worked with delaying or halting life or productivity like that

[@distinguishedallureproduct879]

For example all of the roads or tracks or however the line, citizens gets around are all square panels that can be lowered underground in order to fix or get to a emergency in time

[@blackibis6135]

Describing this concept as a vanity project really struck a chord with me. It seems like a lot of these projects coming out of areas like the UAE or Saudi Arabia have a lot of hype, but actually folds under pressure or scrutiny. No hate or prejudice towards the countries of origin, but this seems very similar to things like the Palm Islands, which have shown themselves to be money-sucking pipe dreams that only really serve as architectural studies. It would be nice to see this level of thought and investment be put towards more important problems like affordable housing, restoration of green spaces within cities, and updates to outdated infrastructure like the U.S. subway system.

[@Ra99y]

There are no homeless people in Saudi. Saudi is a desert so you cannot ‘restore’ green spaces - plenty are made. Saudi has better infrastructure than the US.

[@jodofe4879]

@@Ra99y Saudi Arabia is a morally corrupt and despotic authoritarian regime without freedom or human rights. It enforces barbaric laws and customs that come straight from the Middle Ages. And the only reason it is rich is because it is so busy destroying the entire planet by extracting and exporting more fossil fuels than any other place in the world. Saudi Arabia is entirely dependent on these destructive exports because most of the country is a barren desert and their economy aside from oil and gas related industries remains largely undeveloped. It is prudent to mistrust vanity projects that originate from a place like that, especially if the driving force behind it is some oil sheikh or other member of the corrupt Saudi elite.

[@BogiTheLegend]

the problems your stating doesn't exist in saudi arabia in the first place so do the public transportation

[@paulhart7739]

How to steal the Northern quarter of Saudi Arabia: 1. draw a line to section off the portion that you want to take. 2. Make the residents of the line and ultra progressive and make them an autonomous region. 3. Expand northward towards Israel.

[@blackibis6135]

@GFEGlory and @Bogi I'm speaking inclusively of all large-scale architectural and municipal concepts like this video, not specifically about Saudi Arabia; that's why I mentioned the U.S. public transportation system as an example of outdated infrastructure that needs the kind of resources or research that a project like this line city would need. You've both made good points about the non-existence of those specific examples, but are there things in Saudi Arabia that you think do sorely need an update?

[@l-l]

imagine what a traffic jam would do or blockage of transit. Intentional destruction of part of the wall would be devastating to people's traveling needs.

[@Game_Hero]

Please, I need MORE videos dedicated to obscure radical city proposals like the ones you showed here. About the history behind their creation, proposal, creator, what they're about and a look at the kind of society that would live there both as presented and in a more critical sense closer to reality for better or for worst. Does anyone remember the oceanscrapers, groundscrapers or the domed cities? Something about this is so compelling.

[@Daniel_0778]

Keep hating on their advancement thats all you can do🥱🥱that their money let them do what ever they want for their country!! You call them radical but you a haters what different🤷‍♂️bruhh

[@Game_Hero]

@@Daniel_0778 Are you sure you're replying to me? I haven't said anything bad, I like radical city proposals, they're fun thought experiments.

[@aes53]

I had seen articles on the Neom project in Dezeen and Architizer back last year. It looked like one of those really cool concept cars that auto makers trot out that will never see production. Except, of course, Neom didn’t seem really cool, it sort of seemed stupid. I took a look after watching your video and the Saudis appear to actually be building it. There is drone footage and everything. Depending on how far they get I predict we’ll eventually see plenty of artful photos of the ruins. Sort of like the atmospheric photos of abandoned houses in Detroit. Very informative video Stewart.

[@Btobebone]

if you live in a mid to large sized city, think about a road that you avoid as much as possible because the traffic is terrible. now make it worse and make it the only choice. also think how much fun road repairs would be

[@tannerfilms7900]

a high speed train not a road

[@dustojnikhummer]

@@tannerfilms7900 Yes, one line.

[@RecapRico]

@@tannerfilms7900imagine every person in New York City trying to get to work at the same time on the same train…

[@pedropimenta896]

They wont have that problem because they have hovering cars, which will hover above accidents

[@nothanks9503]

@@RecapRico depends are Saudi slaves closer to Japanese people or New Yorkers

[@beni22sof]

Just one question: will it have a sewage system? The metro on the bottom will it work only on two lines? On a line no overtaking is possible... 500m tall is higher than the Eiffel tower. What about wind? Usual sky scrapers are big, but wind will eventually get around them. A 500m tall building will be like a sail in the wind...

[@axelprino]

This whole project comes of as a huge middle finger to geography, as if someone was told that they can't ignore the terrain when designing a city and they went "you say that, but now look at me build a massive glass wall sandwich across the middle of the dessert!". Either that or that prince binges sci-fi with dystopic settings and then went to make his dreams a reality no matter the consequences or how feasible it is in the real world.

[@axelprino]

@@TheSighphiguy well that's a best case scenario, and an optimistic one at that. It can also just turn out to be a big waste of time, money, and effort that fizzles out long before reaching the point at which it would be inhabitable or even usable at all. I hope you're right and this ends up as a positive in the long run, even if it's just as a cautionary tale, but I'm a bit too skeptic of the project itself to give it the benefit of the doubt, at least currently.

[@hananas2]

The biggest thing I don't get is why it has to be so skinny and tall. It could be 2-5x as wide and still really easy to quickly walk from one side to another, and you'd be able to make it less tall, which means less stairs and escalators, and you could make it shorter, which means shorter travel time from one end to the other

[@gold9994]

That would just be the starting point, before widening up (as normal city)

[@cardboardboxification]

Why ask Why, Just laugh

[@sew_gal7340]

Why be skinny and tall..just make it a square and long...in fact just make it a regular city and be done with it

[@jirislavicek9954]

I would say it has something to do which creating shade in the desert environment

[@artor9175]

I don't think practicality was given much consideration during this design process.

[@Herfinnur]

Having just recently seen a documentary on the history of trench warfare, and how trenches are made in a slight zig-zag line so the pressure wave of bombs are contained, I get chills thinking about how easy this line make it to kill 9 million people!

[@Taladar2003]

Even just a bomb threat or some accident like the 1979 Mississauga train derailment with dangerous chemicals would basically cut the city in two temporarily as a best case.

[@BarrGC]

This would make it harder to kill 9 million people though..., bombs blow up in every direction, just how normal cities should spread....

[@beefysupreme]

also, if trenches were straight, you would be able to shoot down the entire trench line and kill everybody

[@DarkNexarius]

So you could theoretically shot a small rocket inside the building from one side to the other?

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

You wouldn't need to, you'd just need to destroy the roads on either end and most of the people would die before too long as most of the population would be too far from other towns to be able to walk, and an insufficient amount of supplies would be able to come in.

[@anna9072]

The trouble with many utopian city or society designers, is they don’t look at what people want and need, but rather at what they think people SHOULD want and need.

[@pforce9]

When you said that in cities without centers makes us feel lost and uncomfortable, you were describing the way I feel when I find myself in Los Angeles. Everyplace in Los Angeles is just like every other place in Los Angeles.

[@dustojnikhummer]

A non-place

[@206beastman]

Grew up in south central walk around wearing red or blue you will find out its not the same fast.

[@popcornfilms1]

@@206beastman people aren’t the same, as he environment IS.

[@truthandfreedom8145]

​@@206beastman im from England and i knew nothing about the blood/cryp thing. i went to la in 2003 and rode through south central on my bmx with a red hoody on ..... Wondered why loads of people were giving me gang signs and beeping at me from trucks etc 🤣👍

[@moonshinetheleocat1235]

Full of shit and homeless?

[@user-dg9pu4pe9d]

In the event of a disaster, the very nature of a linear city could become a major liability. It would constrain both evacuees and responders to a relatively narrow corridor. If bottlenecks form, responders could have trouble reaching the scene. For those fleeing, bottlenecks could turn deadly. Either because of failing to get far enough away or just the inherent dangers of crowds. Edit: Having read comments, I would like to point out that it is supposed to be 500m tall and 200m wide. Depending on location within Neom, the ground outside could be quite far away. If starting at or near ground level, getting out at the bottom may be relatively easy depending on the frequency and ease of access to exits as well as the number of people trying to escape at a given location. For those higher up, that will become more difficult. For those with disabilities or children, it will be worse.

[@bruceh4180]

That's an interesting point I assumed there would be a service road along it for firetrucks etc with emergency entrances- but assuming usually get me in trouble

[@robertsteinberger5667]

It ignored the most important question; it focused too much on vague concepts and he forgot to mention the social aspect; who is going to live in the city? So many planned cities in china are abandoned....

[@atranimecs]

The planned cities in China are a different story all together...they were slapped together as part of a giant real estate fraud network and China's population collapse due to the one-child policy has set then up for expansion failures.

[@bbraat]

Basically it would be like the people trying to evacuate the World Trade Center Towers: one narrow stairwell for people to escape and firefighters to enter.

[@chromatic2006]

The wind is going to flex this wall and make it topple over one day. With skyscrapers, wind has an escape eventually around the building. It doesn't just build up to a breaking point. But the wind on this wall has only one way to go, up and over, along the entire length. You get a strong wind 90 degrees to the wall, and it's going to flex it hard.

[@HCMCDrives]

"To be in a city without a centre, makes us feel lost and uncomfortable".... What is this based on? Many cities, such as HCMC don't really have a "centre" but are very livable and don't make you feel lost.

[@viforeanu303]

In Romanian, NEOM literally means unhuman... so it's a fitting name.

[@Felix-nz7lq]

Linear cities inside valleys CAN work, but more despite those geographical limitations as opposed to anything else. In Wuppertal ande Chongqing they've managed to make them transit-friendly even, but they had to resort to some pretty extreme monorail setups to make it possible. There's probably also an upper bound on how large such a city can be as opposed to radial cities which can seemingly sprawl infinitely.

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Chongqing is not remotely a line anymore.

[@MrMarinus18]

I think calling them linear is a bit of an overstatement. I think stretched city is a better term. They are not really a line but more as if you took a standard city and just stretched it out. Another really big potential issue with linear cities that could be the most damaging of all is the ease of class division. You can have the rich and poor be completely isolated from each other and that often is how civilizations fall.

[@TheModernVIkingNor]

The Circle would be a better option, when the inner circle is starting to be filled you can build another one surrounding it. in the middle you would have a Central Transport/Metro Hub and Hospital. and transports going around the circle, that would allow Super Fast Transport. from any point in the city.

[@danieldonaldson8634]

But by doing that, you've defined the entire size of the city at the start. So you're designing either for always-climbing real estate prices, or people being unable to raise families that stay in the same city, or areas starting off in disuse, which simply act as gaps in the urban fabric. A study I read somewhere (and there are a number of these) demonstrated that a medieval, non-grid "chaotic" street plan provides the highest efficiency of any built environment, considered as costs of movement, and capability of neighbourhoods and business districts to efficiently organize. The idea is just stupid.

[@TheModernVIkingNor]

@@danieldonaldson8634 No you dont define the enrite size of the city at the start, as you can always add an ew ring around the old one

[@InDeathWeLove]

@@TheModernVIkingNor And we end up with with one of the two most common city layouts we already have and has serviced as far better than a line would.

[@Khaim.m]

That's basically how real cities are built.

[@TheModernVIkingNor]

@@Khaim.m exsacly that's the point.

[@kingsolomon1841]

This reminds me of something in Star Wars lore where Coruscant they just kept building on the buildings they had where people on the very bottom were like monsters and where the poorest and evilest people lived and the people on the top were very well off. People on the lower levels never had the opportunity to see the sun and were stuck there.

[@WanderTheNomad]

And that reminds me of Zaun and Piltover from League of Legends lore

[@AtticusLynchiF]

OMG STAR WARS!!!!!!!!

[@VallornDeathblade]

40k has that but worse with Hive Cities. Towering megastructure cities where people have built on top of one another for centuries until you get things such as The Underhive or Sump where everything flows down and collects and where the denizens are barely considered human.

[@hansbrick123]

you mean Taris from Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic?

[@kingsolomon1841]

@@hansbrick123 I was also talking about coruscant in the Thrawn books but that also now that I think about it

[@joane24]

Linear settlements do occur organically. But a bigger for a town or a city, it's not that functional. There's a linear town in Poland of 6000 inhabitants, along a 9 km street. But it's a exception. Typically linear villages are quite small, and if theyrey developing into bigger cityies they tend to grow in various directions. It's of course completely different from an architect planning a city from scratch, detached from the human element and organic growth.

[@jimhim585]

A big advantage of a city is to have compactness, where everything is in close proximity to everything else - compounding synergistic effects. Making a thin, long city is effectively nerfing your urban planning. Also, it is an inefficient use of materials and is a greater disturbance to the natural environment. A long, impermeable wall, what could possibly go wrong? Idealized cities have been around for as long as man has created towns, this idea not only seems to have disregarded the precedents before it, it has devolved the idea as if no planners, architects, engineers, or environmentalists were consulted. The great wall of stupidity - seriously, was this designed by some AI social media aggregator hype algorithm?

[@Rampant16]

While I agree that the linear city is deeply flawed, I think it is worth examining what proximity means. Of course it usually refers to distance but it can also refer to travel time. If, for example, the efficiency of the linear city means you can travel 10 km in the time it would take you to travel 1 km in a normal city, then isn't 10 km in a linear city effectively the same as 1 km in a regular city. Of course there are a lot of other issues but I think in terms of movement through cities travel time may be a more valuable metric for understanding movement than distance.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

You can get all that stuff in close proximity with a linear city. The problem is getting things, and people, in and out of the central portions of the line as there's a more or less exponential increase in need for roads as you get towards the outer edges of the line. If you need one road's worth of stuff at the middle, then it's going to need to be a lot more than one road at the beginning as each segment is going to need to be supplied.

[@ravensblade]

@@Rampant16 Of course. That's why cities aren't perfect circles. They follow major transportation lines and are stopped by obstacles. But if in cities the only problem was transporting people from one edge directly to the other then every city would have perfect public transport. A train running on the line would need to stop at least every 1km since it can't rally on busses or cars to get somebody to the station. So there is 25 stops there every stop would need a time for people to unboard and board the train. And even then you already created situation that person leaving outside the line, say 200 metres from the wall (300 from the center) actually has shorter distance to the train then the person living in the line but between stops. You have to think how to transport something from any point in the line to any another point in the line. People don't follow single line in single direction. You need to think how to transport EVERY DAY 9 mln people and over 18 000 tons (or nearly 20 000 imperial tons) of food and drinks alone. Also you need to transport 4 500 tons (or 5000 imperial tons) of waste. And assuming only 0.5 kg of waste per person (which is quite low, avarage for EU is 1,33kg). Ad to that the fact that people would also like to have other goods then just essential food, wants to shower, take baths, do laundry. Even if you do it in assembly line style where everything is transported in one direction only it would be very hard. And by that i mean that at the morning people living in the first half of the city would all go to work in the next part, and then uniformly after the work would go to shop and recreation part at the end, where they will stay until evening where everyone will uniformly return to the beginning. If you stayed behind you have to wait another day until services will run where you want.

[@MrMarinus18]

I think the solution might actually be the Soviet style village block. They were essentially self contained places that had the population of a village that were stuck onto cities. They were laid out like a checkerboard with tiers of accommodations. Things like grocery stores and daycares would be in every block while schools would be in every third block and hospitals in every 5th block. While it is a bit extreme I do think we can take the lesson from it, both what they did right and what they did wrong.

[@cmasterson]

@@ravensbladeso when you go into a building with 200 floors it has 200 buttons? An elevator in a tower will have an express elevator to take you to certain floors. Some towers will take you to the mid point and then you get on the next elevator to get to a specific floor. So you get on in the lobby go to 100, then take the smaller elevator to 109. I don’t know why people are thinking the transportation vehicle will hit every stop through the line. That’s not how it works. Even buses in modern cities don’t do that. They travel one route and go to the hub. From the hub you take another bus. In college we took 3 buses to get to the mall with the hub being across from the Bobcats Arena in downtown Charlotte. Travel in your city on public transport and you will see it isn’t bad. Just have to wait every 30-60 min for the next bus to come. Also if accidents happen there is already another on the same line. And that will be figured into it. No one living in that city will care about urban planning and none of the things people in the comments are bringing up.

[@cleverballoon6535]

The dumbest thing is that I can't think of a single reason why it isn't in a circle, if it were a circle of the same size you could never be more half of the total line distance away from the furthest point and everything could be built in nearly the same configuration

[@rynabuns]

well if i knew anything about saudi arabia it's that their government hates anything that's not straight :)

[@jimmyryan5880]

To expand the circle you would have to move all the buildings, streets etc outward. Not easy.

[@AlaskafishStudios]

@@jimmyryan5880 So... how every other city expands? How is that not easy?

[@edwardsummey8843]

I would also think that, if it were a circle, it would be natural to add "spokes" to facilitate travel. Then they would jest fill in the circle. Before you know it, you basically have a walled city.

[@fertilizerspike]

What part of a series of self contained units don't you understand

[@XaqNautilus]

The biggest issue I can think of is that linear cities will offer single points of failure along its entire length. A natural disaster like a tornado or acts or war could cut a linear city into smaller completely disconnected pieces which would cause massive problems. A conventional city offers much more redundancy to be able to weather such problems.

[@TheAnnoyingBoss]

Yes bro.

[@derrickthewhite1]

That's the one that came to my mind, because I've lived it. 80% of Utah lives in in an area between a mountain range and a series of lakes. The area is over 100 miles long, and it doesn't get much wider than 20 miles AT MOST. Its really easy for all the north-south roads to become congested, and for people to be left with no way around. The most common culprit is snow, a few poorly placed accidents can do it as well. Also, road maintenance can easily increase the fragility of the system, as lanes are shut down.

[@user5214]

There was a manhole cover explosion next to where I live. The entire street where it happened is blocked off. All cars must now venture into other streets instead. While causing lots of traffic, at least these cars have the option to navigate around the issue.

[@isays]

idea also reminds me of articles I've seen about "vertical communities" popping up in some asian countries, where the tower block contains work, school, medical, and shopping, such that residents rarely even need to leave the building. I imagine if you slapped a whole bunch of these vertical communities together in a row, you'd end up with something like the line.

[@julesgosnell9791]

I'm not an architect. I'm a software developer. To me, the most important HUMAN aspect of a city is surely proximity - you want to be CLOSE to the shops, the park, the doctor, the pub etc. Then you have to take into account HIERARCHY. Humans naturally organise themselves into hierarchies - different things work at different levels of hierarchy - e.g. a doctors surgery at village level, a general hospital at county level, an e.g. specialist eye hospital in the capital - a village green for playing cricket against the next village, something a bit bigger in your local county town for playing county level sides and and olympic arena in the capital for playing other countries - a village hall for the parish council to meet, something bigger at county level and a parliament in the capital... So surely if you were going to design a city where proximity and hierarchy were paramount as a starting point it would be a large sphere full of smaller spheres full of smaller spheres down to as many levels of hierarchy as was appropriate. Each sphere would represent a level of hierarchy and its assets would be distributed according to importance from its centre to its periphery. This might work well in space, but on Earth we are subject to gravity. So, the problem becomes a compromise between this 3D structure, the 2D-ness imposed by gravity and the skill of architects and builders in overcoming this. A Line-City would be the last thing I would come up with.

[@julesgosnell9791]

@@lydiagrace3242 no - I live in a small village in the countryside 😀 I like peace and quiet, birds singing and a 5 minute walk to shop, pub and post office.

[@jirislavicek9954]

Yes exactly! It's not City for people. It's a place for a robots or a jail for inmates.

[@bomcabedal]

I live in a country with quite a few newly created cities (the Netherlands). Where the better ones distinguish themselves from the worse ones is in their adaptability. Creating a city isn't that hard, but it turns out to be nearly impossible to predict where and how they are going to develop and age. Prosperous neighborhoods may fall into decay or vice versa, tastes will change over time, etc. The issue here, and with a lot of new developments, is that architects generally operate from an idea of design purity that is immediately crushed by everyday practicality, and in this case the circumstances (climate, geography) combined with its design make it nigh impossible to adapt the concept at all. This is in fact a very old-fashioned way to approach a new city, and in my country it was already abandoned after the 1970s.

[@robsilvester6213]

Almost every grandiose plan to 'revolutionize cities' assumes that every person is a static, interchangeable cog, all with the same tastes, habits, job, hobbies, needs, schedules, etc.

[@lukei.1227]

Me trying to turn my car in a linear city and killing 20 people in a 3 point turn

[@nf-sk1cn]

It's hard to predict where a city will develop or grow if you let people build whatever they want wherever they want

[@nf-sk1cn]

@@lukei.1227 You don't need a car in a linear city lol..

[@bomcabedal]

@@nf-sk1cn or even if you don't.

[@Tylerpierre99]

I used to live in a town that was mostly linear. In fact it was 2 towns that kinda reached towards each other. There was one road in and one road out. One side of the town was an impractical wide and deep river, the other side was a ice age remnant that was once a swamp but dries up, yet was still boggy and so deep it was near impossible to spread out west. Living there was mostly impractical. Everything was further away,than it needed to be to walk. The one main artery road was hounded by heavy good vehicles and drivers using the route when other routes were congested, so the road was always damaged, weakened and collapsing. More recently the legislation on building new homes on green belt was relaxed and in my old town they're building 4000+ new homes. Already the roads are abjectly clogged at rush hour. It's just an old town that grew but without any foresight into how anything could be done to make it better. The area was founded long before cars were ever thought of and it shows.

[@levenfeld]

Here are The 5 Reasons (used Glarity app): 1. Linear cities are not designed for or by people, but rather as a machine-like structure. 2. Linear cities do not grow evenly, making it difficult to maintain balanced development. 3. Linear cities lack urban centers, which can make residents feel lost and uncomfortable. 4. Linear cities offer limited choices for movement and can require authoritarian control to implement. 5. Linear cities limit individual choice and rely on efficient transportation networks and strict coordination.

[@judelarkin2883]

Linear cities would be especially handy in a conflict. Normal, spread out cities are surprisingly difficult to level as Russia is currently finding. Linear cities would allow for convenient bombing runs. I’m being somewhat sarcastic but I think a linear city would have vulnerable infrastructure. A sink hole, fire or explosion would divide the city and all its infrastructure.

[@RK-cj4oc]

Actually that very much depends. One of the most famous battles in history was in a roughly linear city. Stalingrad. However it had 1 natural thing that set it apart. It was built against a river. Practically giving the soviets a giant fortified fortress that would take a over the top amount of men and material to encircle. Thus forcing the Germans to attack the city head on all at once. Which gave the soviets a fortress that only had to worry about 1 side and mass bombardment. Your statements still hold true. Its just that not in all cases a linear city would be bad in case of a war.

[@cliff311976]

How about Nuke them like Warmongering Americunts did to japanese? huh😅😅

[@FerNoSabeStreamear]

Other huge issue with Tje Line is the way it literally cuts in half the ecosystem where it's being built. As far as I know about the project, it will be a solid block from end to end, leaving no spaces to preserve migratory routes or other kinds of displacements.

[@damianstasek8946]

Most glaring problem

[@jonathankraus2451]

Migratory routes of what animal?

[@ethanwasme4307]

​@@jonathankraus2451 doesn't have to be an animal, could be insects or birds

[@ellemnist]

@@jonathankraus2451 are deserts not full of creatures? or are you implying deserts dont have an ecosystem?

[@JollyGiuseppe]

Neither of you have answers Jonathan’s original question. Please do I’m also interested

[@tjrune3432]

While I'd seen these designs before, it just occurred to me how terrible these cities would be for any animals who need to migrate through/past this line. To date, I've not heard anything about how these cities have the potential to interrupt the environment. Also I find myself wondering how easy it would be for a relatively small tsunami to turn this from a linear city into a channel city with no escape.

[@DoctorPlacebo]

Border and live stock fences are pretty well studied for how they disrupt animal migration. It's pretty devastating without strong mitigation

[@parmenides2576]

Yea bro all those migrating animals and tsunamis in Saudi Arabia

[@tjrune3432]

@@parmenides2576 I know right? It's almost like someone might take this idea, think it's good and try to implement it somewhere that these might be more detrimental without thinking first! You know, jumping to conclusions!

[@jesuscarrillo3705]

Yeah kimd of like the wall donald trump wanted to build

[@TheJimprez]

I live in Quebec, near the Laurentian park. The highway there was VERY dangerous for decades, with cars hitting Moose and everybody dying all the time (HUNDREDS per year). They eventually built a four lane highway with large middle separators to make it safe, then for a few hundred Kms, they put a fence on each side to block animal crossings and keep them off the road. BUT, they built tunnels for the animals to cross over at their usual spots, and they did learn how to use them.

[@1bluemoondj]

Okay from what I could see is that the linear city has walkways. And also has a transit system. Ever so often you have to get up on that transit system because trains go within this time frame. So at let's say you're at 4:00 1 transit system departs within 2 minutes from floor one from section b. It goes along this track and you basically have to make section be time within a timely fashion. There's other tracks for example section 1 track a. Section 1 track c, section one track all the way to z. That's basically what it is. You know you have to have gardens and you have to pull people in. If you can pull the human nature in to wanting to see they will stay. You have to constantly pull the human nature in mind in order to want them to stay. It's more of not an architecture it's more of a art type of thing.

[@charlescrosby416]

I haven’t seen this mentioned yet, but there are very real risks with this design that could be attributed to something as small as tectonic movement. As the single structure gets larger and larger, small tectonic movements over just tens of years could cause major damage. not to mention, good luck finding a line of land that has appropriate ground to build on that is so long.

[@christiancamlin13]

This is currently being built in Saudi Arabia where they are flattening & digging into a 105 mile long stretch of land that includes both desert and high mountains. The actual building is likely to be modular in nature so any area damaged would just be replaced. Their words not mine. It is hard to know how much they will get built or how long this will take. They already have an army of workers in several spots cutting into the land even tunneling into the mountains. They have already executed peasants for refusing to move out of the construction zone. It is rapidly becoming a brave new world.

[@raidzeromatt]

It'll never get finished (like the burj khalifa It's just oil barons with too much money and no responsibility waving their dicks around A city that big could never properly manage traffic Imagine the power failing/some kind of accident in one section and shutting down any commerce/transportation across that point in the line I'm guessing if any of it is actually developed large sections will be abandoned and people will start building branches off the main line

[@placeholderdoe]

Once you run out of a line of land you can just make it turn into a square, and then you can fill in the square. Then it can grow naturally.

[@ZarkarGames]

​@@raidzeromatt The City will have no trafic only trains

[@godseye13k]

U can build on the sea on the desert these days there is no surface they cant build on. Everton have just filled in the dock removed the water filled it in created a knew ground then built a stadium. And thats in Liverpool England never mind Saudi.

[@edramirez1240]

Thank goodness. A voice of reason over this insane project.

[@gamingchamp6728]

Adam something also made a video basically dunking on The Line

[@hyperbolicchamber661]

Well there’s your problem podcast did as well, it’s on KZbin with slides “gulf state vanity projects”. Mostly about Neom but also covers other failed projects there.

[@justjoeblow420]

You hit the nail right on the head for me when you brought up the lack of a city center, also it just sounds like it would be hellish to walk a hyper linear city like between the lack of a city center which helps with navigation and just it sounds like it has a high chance to make walking distances higher for core services and stores like getting groceries. Something else about linear cities has always rubbed me the wrong way they just sound like they will inevitably feel to artificial and too planned. I like my organic messiness that crops up some times in an urban environment that wasn't heavily planned. Hell it's one of my favorite things about the city I grew up outside of is it's a decently old city and has stayed dense which has lead to some odd things relative to some of the more planned cities I've been in like commercial and residential areas often not having well defined borders between one another.

[@Taladar2003]

Navigation would actually be quite easy in a layout like this as long as it stays strictly linear and has the same dimensions along the whole length.

[@DavidCowie2022]

"Commercial and residential areas not having well defined borders." So the goods and services that people might want to buy are often found close to where they live?

[@tay-lore]

Given this analysis, it's really ironic that the construction of the line of neom has resulted in the construction of towns around the construction sites for the construction workers to live in. So the expansion around the line is already being constructed more rapidly than the line is being constructed.

[@karu6111]

That’s amazing. Now that’s organic growth lol

[@lungshenli]

another big problem for these proposals is that nothing is redundant. Train malfunction at kilometre 41? No one gets to move across that section anymore, cutting the entire city in half. Same for power, water etc. One block falling into disrepair under poverty? The entire rest of the city now is limited by their crumbling infrastructure.

[@mglenadel]

Not to mention deliberate damage. A well-placed explosive charge and chaos!

[@CthonicSoulChicken]

I think the coolest thing about this city is the massive potential for great fiction. What a story setting! Sadly, i think the most likely real-world story would be horror--if this fails, it would be a nightmare to be inside it.

[@robsmith4500]

Absolutely! Snowpiercer the TV series is the closest thing I've seen to this, just on a smaller scale.

[@ccshredder9506]

Maybe a setting for a new Cyberpunk game?

[@CrashB111]

Yeah, like 1 natural disaster striking or a fire and that entire line becomes a tomb.

[@philski777]

Spec Ops: The Line 2

[@raider_reaper_4194]

​@robsmith4500 showpiecer a TV series not the badass movie with Chris Evans?

[@pablotorre-walter4343]

It'd be interesting to see how someone could approach this question from existing linear cities. I know this might be a stretch, but the Florida Keys and other such barrier islands seem like a very close approximation to compare too.

[@Vengir]

I'm not from a linear city. More of a linear settlement. Problems: 1. it's too long to walk. I could easily get to everywhere in it if it was square-shaped. 2. during rush hour, every inhabitant using a car passes right by your house, or the house of someone living on the other end. And on top of that, you have the transit. 3. if they need to do repairs on water pipe anywhere, no one will have water until it's done.

[@cookie856]

@@Vengir For the 2 the solution is easy - train/metro/bus

[@Vengir]

@@cookie856 There is a bus it goes on average once every few hours each direction. The size of the population doesn't allow for more.

[@pyhead9916]

I lived in a linear area like that and those areas have a lot of problems with the supply chain. One serious road accident and you don't make it to work all day.

[@hammerhead8318]

I'd say dubai is nearly linear if you look at sharjah to jebel ali

[@1bluemoondj]

Okay this is how it works, you see those cities that they see that many old adults used to build. You build a small scale version. You test run a small cell version in a controlled environment. That cells should operate within a certain parameter. There is a maximum time that that cell can stay there. After they run the test for x amount of years it should say yes this is the particular outcome this is what will happen anything happens and things of that nature. This will show you know how life would be within this little section. You should be able to run a small scale one with paper. Paper is not like aluminum but so that you can afford it you can easily test.

[@BenRangel]

The question isn't why it's bad, the question is if there's even any positives at all compared to letting the city grow in every direction

[@cantinadudes]

There is a positive. The rich wont ever have to leave the city and if they do, they leave by air, sparing them of the view of poverty they would inevitably get in a regular city

[@Dudeman9339]

It will be simple to navigate. Simple but slow.

[@BenRangel]

@@Dudeman9339 depends it's flat or will be designed with multiple stories like a big cruise ship or something. I at least think easier to navigate a large flat map of blocks rather a multi story layout where you have to find elevators or stairs

[@mymodel6]

@@cantinadudes The sheer amount of ignorance that makes you think that these 'rat runs' are designed for the rich to live in is fucking hilarious...

[@m0n0deferia]

@@Dudeman9339 Its not slow. Its actually pretty fast. The access to the rail network is always guaranteed and at a few meters of distance. And different lines can go at different speeds. Other benefits would be plumbing, electricity,etc. By standardizing the whole city the costs will also drop big time. But also social aspects. As it could be very easy to relocate people given that "its all the same". You could move to a neighborhood 60 kms away and understand how it all works right away. Ensuring equality between people would be much easier than ever as all the resources are shared.

[@passantNL]

I can't see how this would work. A circle is the most efficient way to design a city, because it means the smallest average distance between any two points, which matters when people have to get around to go to work, go shopping, or just visit a friends. A straight line is the most inefficient way to design a city, because it means the largest average distance between any two points. Now, there is more to cities than just the efficiency of travel, but it is still a real issue.

[@lz5517]

There are tons of old towns in the US (at least here in Georgia) that are perfect circles (or were when they got started). It's really cool.

[@Taladar2003]

The main problem with linear cities in my mind is the lack of availability of space that is only a short distance away if you limit yourself to basically one dimension. Anyone who ever played something like Dwarf Fortress knows that a three dimensional layout is more efficient (e.g. storage one layer below workshops, one layer below living quarters) and one dimension seems even more limiting than two.

[@matthewharvey3556]

But it’s supposed to be 300m tall, so there are definitely two dimensions (i.e., plenty of room for putting things above and below.) It’s also 200m wide, so not literally a “line.”

[@faebalina7786]

It’s not too late to back out I hope the regime Knows that Put that money into improving and building character into existing cities.Saudi is a lovely country.Building its heritage into its cities will make it amazing.Oman does a good job of being wealthy,modern and maintaining the heritage and simplicity most places seek to achieve.They should look less at sci fi renderings of excitable minds and realise that more tech and more chaos isn’t what those of us who live in cities seek but the access to fresh air,nature,healthy living and people who also cherish those things.

[@isaganipalanca8803]

Thank you for this superbly researched debunk of Neom! Only an autocratic regime which brooks no criticism, indulges every whim of its leaders and suffers from delusions of grandeur can throw money at a ludicrous project such as this! I'm sure they will also try to incorporate a hypeloop and self-driving flying cars as the icing on the cake. Like Jeddah Tower, conceived as an architectural riposte to Dubai's Burj Khalifah - doomed to fail.

[@landsraad9745]

You ever visit Saudi? That sun is blazing hot. If the Prince wishes to shelter his people in a temperature controlled mega structure then all the power to him.

[@RavenL1337]

@@landsraad9745 your a efing bot please leave the internet to reall humans that aren’t delusional

[@blackagent4754]

Bro is heated at Saudi like he losing sleep over it

[@ismth]

@@blackagent4754 they're not wrong tho lmao

[@cinnamonstar808]

THIS VIDEO IS SPONSORED by white mentality. The kind of mentality that drove the Romans batshit crazy. and they had to coin the word vandalism. even if they build it how long will it stand? exactly Saudi Arabia money = Saudi Arabia rules 1+1 =2 this has nothing to do with it not working; if Elonia Musk built this.. the tone will go from negative to positive.

[@BlingLingification]

You can try a linear city layout for yourself in any city builder simulator, like Sim City 4 or City: Skylines. And you will very quickly observe the issues that Stewart points out in his video. I encourage people to certainly spend the $5 to get SimCity 4 to try out these ideas in a simulated environment. Really pours a bucket of cold water on some of these ideas.

[@John2r1]

The Saudi Arabian royal family has one response which is throw more money at it. If you made a city model of the Palace of Versailles it wouldn't work either. But it did in real life only because King Louis the 14th deemed it to be so. Same logic goes for the giant ass line city the Saudi royal family have decided to build. It will work because they will make it work. It's like a real life version of a minecraft server for them. Only they get to play in creative while your in survival mode.

[@ThatGuyKazz]

That is a horrible data point to use as an argument here. A game like Sim City or City Skylines has a baseline expectation of what a city is and what it should look like. Of course it is not possible to build an efficient line city in those games because it doesn't account for the density packing that is at the core of the design. You still need individual buildings you can't layer several levels of transportation on top of each other efficiently the game still expects you to have cars and roads as a primary mode of transportation. Saying you can solve a problem in within a game that was not designed with that problem in mind is stupid.

[@duckmeat4674]

Neom is a stupid idea, but this is a very weak argument. I cant simulate real life conflict with ARMA 3, I cant simulate real life afyer sims, i cant simulate real modern life urban planning with city skylines. Theyre entertainment first, simulations far second

[@Daniel_0778]

Bruhh keep hating, they alraedy make that!! That their money!! Let them do what ever they want!!!

[@chriswhite3692]

@@ThatGuyKazz You don't need a simulation to know this is a dumb fucking idea.

[@paveloleynikov4715]

As a man living in sudo-linear (okay, more of dumbell-shaped one) city, I found that project highly amusing in a bad way. Also, just imagining air currents around high-rise object of such length is allready alarming.

[@oyuyuy]

'What's the most inefficient shape of a city imaginable?' -'I don't know, a line I guess.' 'Great, lets build a city in the shape of a line!' -'But sir, that will maximize the transport distance and make it completely impossible to walk in the city. It will also be insanely expensive!?' 'Quiet peasant! It is already settled!'

[@evanjph3341]

This really reminded me of a cruise ship, and those don't even have to worry about workplaces, but I remember as a kid being able to go on the Oasis Of The Seas and we could never figure out where we were, it was super confusing, maybe this is more about that boats design (It was a very nice ship so I think a lot of thought went into it), but it was hard to mentally picture where everything was in relation to each other because tons of different recreational areas were stacked on top of each other.

[@execjio1142]

@Juicebox Ronnie i am not sure what that has to mean for the line? I am pretty sure it being walkable is part of the design requirement.

[@execjio1142]

@Juicebox Ronnie sorry, too many and like... emotional assumptions that you are making. I didnt say or express any such points.

[@execjio1142]

@Juicebox Ronnie ehm sure... sure. What kind of game is this where you make drama where there wasnt any?

[@execjio1142]

@Juicebox Ronnie baby totally DESTROYED that banana. Its gone. Police is QLUELESS!!!

[@Skinflaps_Meatslapper]

Like everything else, people would eventually get accustomed to their linear prisons.

[@mindfulpessimist]

Supporters of projects like this give me a "But this goes up to 11" vibe. They inhabit a reality that is parallel to, but separate from, our own.

[@nathanchildress5596]

Ironic use of the word ‘parallel’ there.

[@zerkii6699]

I support this project, looks cool, sounds cool and is achievable. The concerns are kinda dumb, people are all of a sudden engineers and critiques on city structure 😂. Get outta here

[@lazylazerrsp8781]

The best fix to "linear" that i can think of is to make it in a braid like pattern that snakes it's way around terrain and maybe even looping back on itself. The idea being that the strips can be divided by modes of transportation, such as one side being for long distances like trains, another for short commutes that need to pass only a handful of sections and the last residentials with everything within walking distance. Looping sections could encapsulate bigger venues or structures like nature parks or commercial central. The purpose of each section could be alternating and each strip on a rotation to maintain flow without destroying communities yet also creating zones to prevent a seemingly neverending neighborhood. It's very fantastical but it's a fun mental exercise to just spitball an idea or two.

[@timwaagh]

Aren't a lot of smaller towns kinda linear located along a road?

[@gohumberto]

Think of your favourite cities. They are typically built around a cultural centre and radiate outwards, using trams or Metro, or both, to get from outer to inner zones. The Pentagon building is a useful model. It's designed to allow fast access to each of the 5 zones. Cultural centres will evolve at the nodes, but be weighted toward the centre. The great cities (the ones you actually get excited about) evolved into this natural wheel & spoke design. Commerce and the support structure for it "designed it". Give me Paris, Rome, Bordeaux, Barcelona.. etc over this desert road any day.

[@DieNibelungenliad]

Paris is full of crime, poverty, trash, and rats these days

[@OGYouTubeEnjoyer]

Culture is dead bro. Time to move on and embrace the one world government run by the wef. By 2030 it won't matter where in the world you are. China, Turkmenistan, Canada. Everywhere will be the same. You will live in your commie block. You will eat your bug-e-ohs while watching your government provided television.

[@PramkLuna]

A great indicator is the subway system imo. If your subway system has a center or multiple centers with branches and connections, then that means you're able to see the places people often go to and the most used connections with multiple routes and carts. Tl;dr If you're able to plan multiple routes and reach multiple locations with just the subway, you got a healthy city.

[@Real_OSHA_Unsafety_Engineer]

Moscow Metro.... would be one of the best designed ones during soviet era... City has enough parks, everything that is basically needed is within walking distance, and there is always a transportation for public nearby.

[@slantize]

Too bad this design is a logistic nightmare for traffic and moving people around. The congestion occurs at the center area. Grid format is far superior

[@JoergDavid]

As early as the Middle Ages, it was recognized that a straight street within a city is not necessarily the best solution. I think that in the long run I would feel trapped in this modern canyon.

[@capitalb5889]

Plenty of cities were built in the Middle Ages with straight streets- look at Kyoto for example.

[@JoergDavid]

@@capitalb5889 Maybe you are right, but I was talking about cities in Europe. Has something to do with symbolism or so...

[@TomTomicMic]

Straight is okay but high means more cost, it should be wider, lower and initially maybe one third or one sixth the length, at least it's not in water, it's budgeted to cheap as well in billions and not trillions!?!

[@atwistedsky9169]

Fantastic video. Honestly if you start listing the pro's and con's of the design for the Line, it quickly gets to a point where the con's drown out any pro's you may have. Like, the project honestly feels like something that should have remained theoretical and been worked on a lot more. Maybe instead of a line, the project should have been a circle around a large park area with 'spokes' branching out to a larger circle at the edge but i suppose "The Wheel" didn't have the same branding strength as "The Line" lol

[@lolozo214]

The wheel could've had the tagline 'reinventing the wheel' or something which would've been funny

[@94XJ]

The Hub... works for the fallout franchise!

[@theblah12]

Or you know, maybe they shouldn’t build an entirely new city in the middle of the desert for the sake of vanity at all, and instead spend the money improving and redeveloping the cities that already exist.

[@rhythmrobber]

That didn't turn out too well for Midgar in Final Fantasy 7, though

[@paulklp8262]

​@@rhythmrobber Lol, the Pizza.

[@bonnarlunda]

Lines are not natural. Circular elements interspersed with lots of parks and human spaces, with transportation systems underground, would probably be a better way for constructing a city from scratch, if one were so inclined.

[@jty9631]

when i was younger my sister and i created a sci fi idea where an alien species who, living on a tidally locked planet, built a long city that circled the entire circumference of the planet in the area between the light and dark side. the alien species were like humans but completely emotionless. lol. we had never heard of linear cities before.

[@smokego123]

There is another reason - one of the things I learned about urban economics is the reason why most cities look circular: rent - imagine a city centre where the rent becomes more and more expensive closer to it, if the city is indeed linear, there will be a lot of unused space horizontally from the city centre, and people would automatically rush in and fill in the gaps

[@Bustermachine]

It's especially interesting because this suggests that, much like an organism, there's an ideal total cross section of a city. This is demonstrated by the fact that perfectly radial cities also tend to be problematic and develop additional 'centers' as they grow larger and larger, or consume nearby towns and smaller cities into themselves as subsidiaries. What would probably be the most idea of all worlds is a network of walkable cities, adapted to their specific locations and climates, and grown to whatever size is appropriate before walkability is compromised, linked together by high speed transit, such as rail, with smaller towns and suburbs located along these transit lines

[@haraldbull1558]

Hyperobject truly feels like a definition that reality didnt need.

[@SeidCivic]

Hyperobject: very big thing

[@enormousmaggot]

it smacks of intellectuals intellectualising

[@hansofaxalia]

“Ai led healthcare” only makes me think of the hospital in Idiocracy. Is healthcare really the one that has to be automated?