Why Linear Cities Don't Work (5 Reasons)

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Neom's Line is a 170km long city that is no wider than a city block. It's extreme shape runs along transportation networks and promises an efficient and futuristic urban design and lifestyle. However, Linear cities have been around for more than a hundred years, yet they are rarely built. Why not? Why are lines not considered great shapes for cities? From poor access to public transportation to a lack of social cohesion, linear cities can suffer from a number of issues that make them less livable than more traditional, compact urban forms. This video breaks down the top reasons linear cities have either failed or not been built, despite dozens of proposals since their invention in the late 1800s.
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Architecture with Stewart is a KZbin journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
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Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
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University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/
#architecture #urbandesign

[@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!😂😂😂

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@B_Van_Glorious]

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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@user-lo2rg8qh9l]

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

[@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

[@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... 🙄

[@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.

[@Rengo-.-]

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

[@darylwhitt7271]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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!?!

[@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.

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@user-ro9jg8yc2q]

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]

@@user-ro9jg8yc2q 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.

[@user-ro9jg8yc2q]

@@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@twells138]

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

[@shitlordflytrap1078]

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

[@twells138]

@@shitlordflytrap1078 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.

[@falsettoandhighnotes6913]

I didn't know Vince Gilligan could teach me so much about cities. Thank you sir!

[@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.

[@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.

[@myzookin6158]

I'd love to see a counter video explain how you could make it work. Its easy to point out it flaws, but could they be fixed and still keep that look of a linear city?.

[@Bustermachine]

Form does not dictate function as they say, function dictates form. You can certainly build a linear city . . . but no matter what solution to implement to keep that shape, the same technology or technique could be better applied in a city that isn't arbitrarily limiting itself to stroke the ego of a plutocrat.

[@boedilllard5952]

They'd have to have four monorails/subways beneath the city as well as a 6 lane - two way highway on oneside as well as a 6 lane road on the opposite side or beneath the highway but that would be a huge issue if there was an earquake or any repair was required. You'd need a center two way road through the center just for emergency vehicles. You'd need a nearby airport and a railroad depot nearby. The noise would be unpleasant unless they use noise absording materials.

[@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.

[@shitlordflytrap1078]

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....

[@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).

[@teambellavsteamalice]

I think you're kinda right, with all extra requirements you implicitly add. Linear cities need to be perfectly planned, and indeed no freedom must be given. Instead of seeing that as a downside of linear cities, you can also see it as a flaw in humans not being able to stick to a plan, need for bureaucracy and imperfect planners. I see a linear city just as an example of a perfectly planned city, an Arcology that happens to be repeated in a linear pattern. The core is walkability, the maximum being the width of the strip. I think you could definitely extend this with to a kilometer, a 10-12 minute walk. The lack of cars and forced used of public transport is the real win her. You could even diversify squares into local zones and high traffic zones (intercity stops), say every ten zones. No space wasted to cars and parking means plenty space for local, intermediate and long-distance travel for both people and goods. The focus on walkability makes it already much safer and nicer. Each square kilometer is like its own city, and can be as human, chaotic and picturesque as you want. You have a lot of "efficiency" wins, you can give away part to make it fun, livable and unique. Like a dutch inner city with canals in one square and a central park in another. You do need have some high rises if you want to house many people, but even if you don't it's still a possible improvement over organically grown cities. Instead of a line with 1 sq km zones you could also make a grid of zones. This would be like a normal city but pedestrian and well planned...

[@paul-xo7oo]

Just imagine living in a sector that it itself or has an almost abandoned neighboring sector. Just guess how quickly the "broken window" effect vanishes this city.

[@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

[@anotheryoutubeaccount5259]

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

[@user-wu2hu3us6x]

Better idea, a line highway, 2 frontage roads on other sides with spiralized offshoots in both directions. Provide plenty of space while simultaneously removing almost all traffic lights/roundabouts. And if you want to add space its easy, set up perpendicular line and spiral structures linked by highways between the spirals. Travel time to basically any part of the city would be much much quicker with most connectitons allowing speeds up to 60 miles an hour and with the lack of stoplights, any other road could easily get a 40 mph speed limit with almost 0 lights delaying the process.

[@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.

[@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

[@vvizix4681]

i know you put this video out 7 months ago but im from hoopeston, il and i couldnt believe you name dropped us haha

[@treeman101]

city blocks is the best way has you can slowly upgrade a city had technology advances, makes it easy for removal of sections and to replace with more up to date structures

[@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!"

[@dingbop963]

​@@defeatSpace Illinoisese

[@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.

[@TheSighphiguy]

you live in an enclosed house......no? it has doors?

[@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

[@michaelmorris4515]

This got me to thinking on how the "cities" on the interior of a Stanford Torus would work. In this case, that is all the "land" that's available unless the decision is made to transform the torus into a cylinder.

[@user-yd2di9qv3n]

the ideal city-design based not only on mathematical/geometrical intuition but also on some large cities that "work" today, has "different scales" of thinking. At smaller scale "square blocks" make sense, as it is the case in many cities, but not taken literally as it is the case in the USA. At mid scale (down-town + city + even larger-city) concentrical highways mixed with straight (line) rays from the down-town towards the outward concentrical Highways is what can make for an optimal "moving" of anyone (people) or anything (vehicles) from any point in the larger circle (area) to any other point in the circle-area. You move for large distances on the concentric circles and when you get "close" to a "block" of interest then you move on the "rays", so finally as you zoom-in you move around blocks to get to where you need to get. By making the city a circle you can also optimize the placement of important/shared-land-marks, be it a stadium, be it an airport, be it a big unique kind of hospital, be it a unique kind of university, government body, etc, etc. If you build a city like the Neom Line, and claim that ANYTHING you want will be reachable within 5', it implies that there aren't any "shared" type of facilities, and hence "what you need" will redundantly repeat itself at smaller scale, which implies, not best doctors, not best offices, not best hospital, not best sports-event. It simply makes no sense, cause transportation along the 170km to say you had onlly one hospital which is in worst case scenario at 170km far away from you, that you either move 170km in 5m', which is impossible even with hyperloop, otherwise it would mean it has no stops, making it less usable. So no matter how you think about it, one cannot have "shared facilities" be reachable in 5' from anywhere, and hence they need to be smaller, automatically meaning "not good enough", to host or duplicate most high-end hospital care or stadium, or airport, or train-station.

[@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!

[@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.

[@curtcookmusic]

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

[@bloodyidit4506]

@@OskarHersch 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.

[@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...

[@jboling513]

great walk through. feels like one of these cites would be pretty close to the movie/series 'Snowpiercer'

[@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.

[@RobertLockhartMakesGames]

I'd love to see that, too!

[@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

[@johndesade126]

This is what I got from this video: 1) Linear cities are not made by or for people 2) Linear cities don't accommodate organic growth 3) Linear cities offer diminishing return on efficient movement 4) They lack any sense of centrality 5) Their need for over-planning offers no one a sense of 'choice' Any corrections?

[@agatha1812]

i'd love to know your sources as im currently writing bachelor's thesis on the line!

[@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?

[@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?

[@tonescape1]

@stewarthicks : Excellent video. I'm just pointing out a mistake in your narrative, maybe you can superimpose a text layer over the video with the correction. At 9:12, you said "urban cities don't have them" but you meant "linear cities don't have them".

[@redomer91]

When it comes to the problems of implementation. It reminds me of the concept of 15-minute cities that seem to share similar problems.

[@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.

[@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

[@Psycandy]

In this case, the idea is to generate an artificial environment insulated against the desert yet removing the need for personal transport, and for both cases, a linear, tall, narrow design provides an optimal, open-ended means to achieve this. In essence, the Emirates are all competing for most outlandish construction project where money is no object. Like the pyramids and other monster landmarks, these are destined to be drawcards, regardless of how practical they are.

[@vincentjanse]

Oh that's a good point. If the city is linear and rigid in structure how can you then allow growth and transformation. This concept needs everything to be perfectly distributed along the line which is like expecting a tree to grow without branches.

[@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.

[@TheSighphiguy]

succeed or fail, many useful ideas and inventions will be learned from this endeavor.

[@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.

[@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.

[@drewstead316]

The population before globalization 1950 in Saudi Arabia was 3-4Million, they only need that one city to continue existing and they put the airport between the rectangle and the coast. Neom will be over 6Million acres, more than twice the size of San Diego County.

[@LazyGibbon]

Main concerns for me would be it's location and organic growth. If you'd have something like this in a place that isn't mostly desert it would be a lot more accessible from different points and places because it would have to be. Growth obviously like explained in the video. The idea of this, on a smaller scale (100.000 people or so) appeals to me a lot. It seems like a very nice way to deal with traffic and density. Of course you'd rather grow a city organically a have the city create a story over time but at a certain point we are out of space to build. Solutions like these, while not ideal, could form an answer on the growing need for housing. Especially in Europe where, if things in Africa continue like they are, we will have a massive influx of climate refugees.

[@basillah7650]

It's in a desert stupid as hell to make a city that goes further out in a line no matter what is done disconnect the water pipes and block the entrance to the roads going out and the millions of people all dead except for the few rich that can fly out but costs a lot in fuel doing a return trip because just goes out in a line for hundreds of miles...

[@jirislavicek9954]

"Climate refugee" is leftist nonsense!

[@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)

[@cardboardboification]

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.

[@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

[@QuinnTheVegan]

Come to Nanaimo BC, Vancouver Island Canada! 4 minutes across town and half an hour from north end to the south end!

[@planb2504]

Imagine Friday night with heavy traffic driving back home from work to the other end of the 105mi line.

[@Gofroze]

It’s a train that can go from one end to the other in 20 minutes

[@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.

[@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.

[@DavidGuild]

That's basically how real cities are built.

[@TheModernVIkingNor]

@@DavidGuild exsacly that's the point.

[@GiveItAIDS]

Is there no oil north or south of it? What am I missing here? This is a country wide wall. What is it blocking?

[@goodtimetraveler8261]

I think most folks don't _get_ the linear city. There's a limit to building _vertical_ cities - ie, sky scrapers, high rises, etc. Linear cities remove those limits. It's as easy as that. Linear cities multiply the efficiency of vertical cities by factors; it's similar to the expense and complications of _remodeling_ and home, as opposed to far less expensive and far more efficiency of _building_ a home.

[@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.

[@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.

[@Luckie_7]

Giving “the other end of town” a new meaning

[@the_dark_soul_of_man]

Imagine living in one end of the city, and working or going to school at the other end. Commute would be a nightmare.

[@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

[@vincentjanse]

I think the idea would work fine for a purely residential building. Because it would be much more comfortable then having to go outside all the time in that climate.

[@user-ix7xj6vw5d]

is it still under construction? are they realllllly going for it?

[@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

[@KimyouiF]

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.

[@darklordking5754]

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

[@kingsolomon1841]

@@darklordking5754 I was also talking about coruscant in the Thrawn books but that also now that I think about it

[@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.

[@northdot9]

I find it fascinating that if you look at some cities, Toronto is the example closest to me, that there is a certain linear aspect to it, in as much as there are dots of "build up" at Subway stops, arranged in a line. The linearity emerging after the installation of mass transit solutions. It's a great foil for talking about how linear cities might work, and how they don't. The poor unwashed masses live in the cramped condos close to the stations, the middle and upper class living further from those spaces in single family homes. That's not to say there weren't previous linear patterns, not built on subways , but on the arterial roads that preceeded the subways.

[@kelvinw.1384]

I think Toronto is now a really bad example of unchecked urban sprawl. It goblining up neighboring cities has exploded its population but now requires better public transit options.

[@northdot9]

​@@kelvinw.1384 Do you mean it is a good example of unchecked suburban sprawl?

[@raydunn8262]

Aren't cities usually warmer in the winter because of all the buildings. And row houses are warmer because the cold wind only hits the houses in two directions versus four.

[@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😅😅

[@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?

[@michaelhiltz7846]

Cities don't usually interest me as places to go see. But the line might be interesting to see how they attempt to pull all of this off.

[@vsznry]

If you look at Dubai from above, its pretty linear. & everything converges to the Burj & Dubai Mall. It seems very well planned from the sky. & you see the contrast of the Trillion Dollar City and the surrounding old fishing village. Though I think cars still cause a shitload of traffic outside the Khalifa city centre.

[@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!

[@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.

[@johnowens8992]

A spoke would be the ideal, i get it its folding up a sheet minimising distance and a need to stop sprawl, but a hub and spoke line model would be better

[@jinyoungmysteria193]

The Neom's Line might just end up becoming another Kowloon Walled City incident, but on a very much, much, much bigger scale

[@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.

[@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.

[@JustAnAverageBrad]

so basically it will devolve into a stationary version of the Snowpiercer train

[@plazma5343]

Could not listen to a single word you said while being hypnotised by that glorious stash. Damn fine looking my man ! (Great video :) )