This city concept breaks architecture (THE LINE) 

This city looks like where the rich and powerful would live in a post apocalyptic film, while other survivors would live outside the walls

It's also worth mentioning that the train system has a single point of failure because of the city is a line. Something stops working in one place, and the whole city's transportation stops working. This project is genuinely an urban nightmare and a giant money pit.

You are sooo good at saying that this is a stupid idea without saying its a stupid idea

I like how the House of Saud’s progress thus far has been a seaside resort, a development for the royal family and a convenient airport with which they can now visit those places. Sounds like a con for them to get a nice beachside resort.

there are so many issues with the concept, i am kinda surprised that people are even talking about it seriously.. it really seems like a first semester project you did inspired by futuristic movies

I don't understand why these concepts always have to have this supremely oppressive, dystopic atmosphere. That's the immediate thing that struck me.

I find it so weird that this project can be accurately summed up as "Kowloon city but for the ultra-rich" and it still somehow got greenlit.

I really appreciate that you address things seriously and rationally without immediately dismissing them as ridiculous (even when they are). It seems more fair and it's refreshing

What I love about this concept is that it's so unbelievably insane that you can talk about it for hours and not run out of criticisms.

"Encourages walking" LMAO. A line is literally the mathematically least efficient way to organize this city. There's a reason most cities have a central hub with a sort of "circular web" going outwards - it maximises the number of destinations from a given point with the least amount of travel necessary

Glad to see a critique that addresses the mirrored walls, the (lack of) daylight, and the ecological and human disasters associated with this vanity project.

Isn't this close to the Red Sea fault line too? So seismic activity will have a huge impact.

A 170km long linear city is one thing but the 500m tall mirror walls make this completly insane

In engineering communities, there's a saying that keeps going around: "An architect's dream is engineer's nightmare". Which is not always true as literal meaning. It usually for design or project that just want to look cool and innovative without actually designing it to be workable. But, looking at this project, I can say this could be a nightmare for engineer, architect, and city planner.

I am very impressed by the quality of this video, not just the presentation material but also the critical opinion on this project from an engineering, archiectural, and political point of view.

I watched this video a while back. Recently, CNBC posted a video explaining in very nice detail how cruese ships work. And I think it is a good watch in relation to this video because the lines would be like a super long cruise ship. Including having the laber class in the lower decks.

It's amazing what you can design when you just ignore all the glaring problems with your ideas

I am not sure that I could possibly think up a more excellent scenario for a horror/dystopian film or video game. When the infrastructure fails and the electricity starts to falter, when the disease begins to spread, when the upper class hides and attacks the lower levels (and vice versa), when the authoritarian regime locks things down and lies for international appearances, when the policy is "no one in and no one out," when the protagonist needs to get from one end of the city to the other on foot passing through every stratified danger along the way, when the only way out is a fatal drop over a wall into harsh desert, when countless herds of wild disoriented beasts congregate on either side of the wall ready to rip you to shreds, when the whole thing is a mirror so that a low flying rescue vehicle accidentally crashes into it, when light itself is unreliable and the whole place is periodically cast into darkness, when the whole population is a global blend of languages and conflicting cultural expectations all starving together and freaking out and largely raised in luxury so that most of them have no basic idea of how to survive, when the food is gone and the human hunting begins, and finally, when all the bleeding edge tech goes haywire with malware so that delivery drones and infrastructure robots are repurposed by a central A.I. operating system to Purify the Line for the Synthetics... ...boooooooooy howdy do you now have the most excellent concentrated blend of intrigue, battle, survival, exploration, hope and tragedy and horror subgenres colliding. _(I mean, I'd play it.)_

What a great channel! I didn't realize how invested I was in architecture until watching Dami. New favorite!

In addition to the issues you outlined so well is the east-west axis. Residents on the north side of Neom will never receive direct sunlight (so they can grow moss in their window planters?) while those on the south side will have no relief from the sun. Wouldn't it be an improvement if the city were rotated 90 degrees.

I think you summarized it well by calling it a "Metaverse" project

The bigger advantage of the line is that it will make giving directions so much more efficient "just go straight"

Your channel and B1M have probably the most informative channels on construction and architecture. Love that I stumbled across this.

This video is a beautiful example of how to draw an audience in with a fairly straightforward but fascinating technical look at a problem that could be so easily reduced to that, then gradually teasing out the complexities of rights and social issues and sustainability. Disabled people exist, there is life in the desert, there are *communities* in a desert, there are communities in the *country* that could be seeing this money used sustainably. Really, really brilliant. Thank you Dami Lee.

I love that you've seriously tried to address the logical issues here while most of us just looked at the idea and laughed and rolled our eyes.

I'm just imagining how crime would work there, also when she mentioned the lower levels of the residential box being that of workers and the upper levels being that of millionaires, it reminded me of the Netflix movie "The Platform" and the city concept reminds me of "Snowpiercer". the concept really sounded extremely oppressive and dystopic like another commenter said.

I love your not afraid to ask questions about issues on public projects that generally worshiped as the best new idea that everyone has to believe is true or the best.

HANDS DOWN SHE IS ONE OF THE BEST PERSONS OUT THERE TO CRITICIZE, CONSTRUCTIVELY TOO ON THIS PLATFORM ABOUT ARCHITECTURE RELATED TOPICS!!!!!🙌✨

About the environment disturbance, I think it's also worth mentioning that a 500m high wall is going to disturb so much the wind patterns, it might actually have devastating consequences on the line itself: I wouldn't be surprised if it just creates a huge sand deposit in front of one side of the line, as well as create wind abrasion. Also, it might create microclimates on either side, and for sure disturb usual water patterns, maybe creating flooding in some areas after a desert rain.

I've watched quite a few videos on 'The Line', but you are the first person I've heard mentioning the potential impact on the surrounding wildlife. Kudos! People just assume deserts are dead zones, but they are actually teeming with life.

Another great video! I live in San Francisco, where the transit system is historically designed to focus the whole region on downtown San Francisco (though cars and highways make it easier to "metabolize" realities like San Jose rising to have double SF's population and "reverse commuting" to satellite corporate compounds throughout the region). What the Saudi Prince should be briefed upon is that San Francisco is ALREADY a case study in the problems of over-emphasizing a tiny version of "Neom" with it's existing transit system today, right now, and observable maintenance and usage. That's the four stops of overlapping "MUNI" and "BART" systems in a small corridor just around 2 (not 170!) kilometers long as the "heart" of the transit plan for the whole area. There are TWO tracks for MUNI and TWO tracks for BART passing through this section of the entire area.. and if there is a problem at any of these four stations... transit is slowed or stopped for the City and the region at subsurface and this "pinch point." IF there is an accident, such as a suicide on one track, then one system is immediately crippled to 50% capacity using a single track for reduced train traffic in both directions. An earthquake, in theory, could make both tracks disrupted or unsafe and kill the entire flow indefinitely. In my opinion, this has already shown to be a disaster, propped up by emergency deployment of surface buses (less efficient and, in the case of BART, impossible to replicate the efficiency of up to 10 packed train carriages every five minutes or so in rush hour) and then the surface buses further congest the street level and bridge pinch points so it's not an actual competitive alternate use case, it's just how you rescue people from a system that has no other redundancy which can help. Even without tragedy, how do you maintain or upgrade the system without massive inconvenience? In my thirty years of living in SF, routine maintenance has meant that evening or overnight service just goes away for months at a time, which creates not only social but economic woes for the central area.. in NEOM, there would be curfews or "just walk 40 km to see your uncle if you must" scenarios! Again, the ONLY reason this is tenable is that the foolishly unitary section of the transit system is LESS than two kilometers and we have surface level options. The contrasting example is NYC, where there are so many lines, that an entire line can be CLOSED and only the people served only by that radial line are impacted, but the majority of people can adapt immediately by moving to another subway or train line and then lesser inconvenience of surface transit in outlying, less dense areas. By building a system that emphasizes a single, unitary and unified system, when (not if, but when, as all things fail, or get compromised by crime or terrorism) that slips, people will be forced to walk MUCH more than "five minutes' to get to friends or family up to 170 km away! Thanks for reading!

It's amazing, they solved all the problems and challenges of today's modern cities by just not thinking about them!

As a Riyadh native and someone who has lived here for their whole life, taking a simple 10 minute drive around the city you will see tons of failed architecture/construction projects. And it seems every couple of weeks they come up with a different and more extravagant megaproject to focus on.

Such a well done informative video: simple, concise, straight to the point ! Bravo and thank you !

thank you Demi and to the team responsible for making these videos happen

I like the idea of it as a creative exercise. I get to imagine what would I do with the constraints presented. But as a real project it presents more problems than solutions it could offer. It also kind of reminds me of the movie "Snowpiercer". Could be a real problem for anyone living there who is not a billionaire.

also, thank you for the "ethics" portion, which contextualizes the impact of this architecture in real life, both during the build and after the build (if it would ever get to that point); architecture does not exist in isolation, so it does not make sense to ignore its physical, social, cultural, and political surroundings

I absolutely love architecture but I have never once look at it in a fashion as which just describe and I just to thank you for giving me this eye-opening perspective of just how much, and on how many levels, that an architect must consider and decide over. Absolutely awesome video. Thank you

Imagin living in a town where there is only one street, with very similar buildings on both sides that all go up to the same height (maybe 8 floors) and no variation of land, just some minor up or down slop. This sounds like living in a large and endless corridor. They should call it The Very Long Corridor. Sounds perfect for creating a new type of Mental Illness!

if Claustrophobia was a city, it would look like the line. Just the thought of living in a city like this feels like being in a dystopian.

What I find scary about "city with its own laws" is that it would create an environment where controlling the citizens would be really easy. The city's lay out would make it so much easier to force the citizens so stay in their apartments. To me this just sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen.

Thank you for yet another excellent presentation. I personally hate massive projects like this because they stink of being a scam/publicity stunt, and also egotistical humans trying to brute-force nature instead of just working with the landscape and the natural resources in those locations. That trillion could so easily be spent on planting permaculture forests, revitalizing their deserts, feeding and housing those in need, and so much more!

The costs and effort for maintaining the mirror walls alone will be gigantic

I'm so glad you spoke about wildlife corridors and the natural impact of it, it's something far too overlooked

Long story short: a lot of design ideas has been put on the king’s table, he liked this one so he’s building it regardless of the cost and no one can say anything about it.

It's hard to imagine a city design with more red flags

Such an interesting project... Thank you for your video, interesting and feel smarter after watching it - as always 😊

This concept feels to me like it would be more at home in a sci-fi movie than real life.

This reminds me of living in the Snowpiecer. The problems with this city is that it does not make use of the inherent advantage a grid of streets gives you. The advantage is that you can get from place to place through multiple means. This is also a safety concern. Getting to a place in multiple ways helps address fires, medical emergencies, etc. Having one line of transportation is not efficient - that’s already been proven. What about the sound and vibration of the trains relative to the proximity of housing etc.. living in a box is not a good idea! You need to be out in the world, along the coast, and minimizing the impact on the landscape.

This is a really good analysis! I really enjoyed listening tobyour points and realized I agree with everything you said, although I was at first excited about the project.

I just discovered your channel from watching a ton of your shorts! I love it!!!!

When I saw the marketing for this city, I absolutely thought it was a viral teaser for a new dystopian movie or TV show. Listening to your critique of it - and in particular about how idea creation happens within cities - it weirdly makes sense that an authoritarian regime would be behind this type of concept (fewer chances to "colour outside the lines" when all you have is one long line).

The Line is the type of concept people come up with when they have never lived in the real world and know nothing about real world conditions.

One big wave or particularly strong stormy winds and it looks it'll just topple over

Your wise analysis makes brilliant points. Makes me think the planning is in its infancy. Just because you have a mag-lev, doesn’t mean we should all line up. In the US we have created a grassy bridge over, or under the highway. Animals use them to stay off the highway.

The fact that this is taken even the tiniest bit seriously is insane. The problems are just so fundamental and obvious, along with just being generally impossible to actually construct. I'm curious what is actually going to happen with this insane project. Will it just never get built and they hope everyone forgets it was proposed?

an additional thing that I dont see many people talking about: the trains failing. if even one "pod" or whatever they decide to use fails; whether it be crashing, malfunctioning, or anything else, half of the ENTIRE transport system is down until that single unit or issue is fixed. especially if you can only go in one direction. if it happens to be the case that both lines have different or the same issues within the same time period; the entire city MUST move around on foot; maybe on bikes if they have even planned for those to be included

Alot of food for thought here, alot of good points to ponder about. Enjoying the videos and topics.

All the points made by you here in this video are valid and true, and they post a reality. Whoever had the chance to revise this project, or did not have experience enough and/or (probably both) he was afraid to argue with the prince. From the moment I found out this project was being constructed, I knew it was a idealistic dream and too ambitious project It should be given to Elon to take to Mars. Good for you. You are great. Keep up with those fantastic and realistic observations. They show all the considerations we have to have nowadays to construct a futuristic and ideal world here on Earth. Thanks, Tony-G

there are lots of ideas like this: people always want to 'build something from scratch and get everything right from the very start'. There are two issues with that approach. First, the period of time when you start making a plan is always the time when you are least prepared to complete it. By the time you're halfway done, you're going to know a lot more about whats needed to complete your project. This means you should be prepared to change and pivot as you continue. Second, these kinds of grand plans always underestimate how big the little problems are. How do you get produce and products to every store in the city? How do you even get into the city? What if you want to move a new couch into your apartment, how will that work? Who will do maintenance on everything? its like... you ever watch those videos on the billionaire mansions with tons of open space and 18 bathrooms and 4 kitchens? Most of the time when I see those, all I can think about is how awful it would be to live there on a day to day basis. Sadly, real life doesn't fit inside a line.

Feels like the perfect example of form over function to me.

BIG IF the city gets built…it will turn into the movie snowpiercer without the cold snow! 😅

Thank you for calling this out, the first time i saw the line i was like 🤣

When I first saw the announcement of this project, I was really surprised at all the positive media they got. Honestly being an Architect, we have always learned that organic growth always happens when things are spread across, not in a linear form. The Line according to me is a disastrous design.

I was part of this "Engineering Exploration" program in high school, and to expose us to a little bit of civil engineering/city planning concepts, we were tasked to design a city concept from scratch. Obviously, none of us had any experience about the possible problems of different concepts, and so most of our designs, while having a noble idea in theory to solve one problem, creates lots of other problems that we didn't know to expect. "The Line" looks like one of those high school projects that we made. An idealized concept whose only real function is to look "cool," "innovative," or "futuristic," without the foresight of being able to solve any real problems. Even as someone who's not an architect, civil engineer, or city planner, I can see so many problems with this. You hit it right on the nose in this video with your point, "They're forcing these constraints that create so many issues, and saying they'll just solve those issues with better technology.

Love the idea of a pedestrian zone! In the US, so much space is taken up by vehicles and storing them which only adds to the congestion.

My brother is actually one of the people developing this thing. I'm just quietly watching

The first thing I'm thinking of is the amount of birds that will be killed by these horrible mirrors. It makes me sad. I'm glad you're talking about the environmental impact of this monstrousity. I hope it doesn't get built at all.

The studio I'm currently working at was tasked to provide concept renderings for a segment of this project. I won't go into details (for my own safety and for keeping the job), but I will say that you can't imagine the "guidelines" we were given. And the majority of us are architects and among ourselves, we had so many questions. Me personally was concern with most of things said here in the video, and would like to add: traffic >what happens if there is an accident on the road? In cities as we know traffic disperses to the other routes. Here you have one big highway and can only go back and forward. plumbing> how in the name of Corbusier would plumbing here look like? You would basically have to treat every segment like it's "Unite de Habbitacion" itself or like one big building for itself. Foliage> It should be illegal to provide a misleading image of a full-grown tree with a canopy of 3m in diameter and only 0.5-1m growing ground depth. (Ironically this is part of my job) That "thermal diagram" is pure nonsense. The hot air rises-true, but it prevents cool air from entering the same way. Meaning cool air is supposed to be input from below so as it heats up rises and vents out. As it is fun to work on projects like this (we literary went full-on crazy with some building concepts) - It is very concerning to think that ideas like this are forced while disregarding some of the issues that are known for decades now (like negative impact on the wildlife habitat). And the thought of being part of it (by working on it) makes it even worse. As @DamiLee said here architects put their client's interest over their own, and when your client is the monarch - you can only do as he asks you to do or he will find someone else to do it as he wants it.

That city is so gonna be a dystopia

Very interesting, I had the same concerns as a environmental engineer student. Building a straight line through an ecosystem (yes desert 🏜️ is an ecosystem) many researchers have seen the damage of highways/fences/mass home building on animals, land and as a whole ecosystem, that’s why the Netherlands and other countries do over or under passes for animals to cross!! Love 💕 your detail and talking through the different issues and aspects! I also agree with the wall, that the stability, the wind and the drastic changes in temperature! Plant 🌱 life they have on the top FAKE…can’t survive!! Remember how high that wall is, closer to the sun ☀️ in a desert 🌵?! If they had cover and plant tarps then yes but they had those suckers right out like a park garden. A beautiful idea and concept but I feel the project has many issues to over come before getting off the ground! Loved 🥰 the interesting chat!

This project is a hit, just like the dubai world islands project.

The sunlight reflecting off the mirror to create heat zones was the first thing that came to mind. If they have a forest there, it'll dry up fast. The water would be very very hot.

Not only in the way that it looks in nature/where it's located, but just the way it's structured and how it feels... seems like more of a jail or a micro-managed living space rather than a city of "innovation".

I love it teacher, every video feels like a real lesson in today’s architecture, if you don’t teach anything to do with this subject may I be the first to say that you really should! You make everything look fun and sound interesting as you delve into your topic for said videos!!!

Great video. The transportation could work along the lines of Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" - express in the middle, regional, commuter, local, hyperlocal as you get further outside. Anyway, thanks for the much needed splash of cold water.

The line is the only network topography where every location is a single point of failure. This is what happens when you plan a city without involving any city planner.

One of my greatest concerns is that - even if many of the problems were overcome (practical, social and environmental) - renders often look more vivid than the reality, so the one great selling point - that it looks futuristic - might fail; It might end up looking and feeling claustrophobic and artificial.

Dear girl, I follow this stuff (regreening deserts, etc.) and wondered about the Saudi plans for their new straight city. Your review reminded me about need 4 ecological corridors for all flora and fauna of that area. Along w/your other constraints on the plan, I think that the Royalty gave instructions for a contingency design plan, to consider building an isolated controlled city meant specificaly for Arab populations of civil disobedient moslems who protest against the rulers (considered a sin if rulers are themselves Moslem) or simply over population for various people to migrate to, and then commune to the cities to work daily.

When in the desert, if you take a temp every 10 feet vertically, you will find a pretty sharp gradient between surface (125-130F) and 50 or 100 feet up (90-100F at a guess). Makes for some very interesting dynamics along th inside and outside faces...

A line shape requires the same public buildings (schools, grocery stores, sports clubs, town halls etc.) to be built more often to serve the same amount of residents compared to a classic circular layout where residents can live in the entire radius around public buildings. Just a basic thought I had immediately from playing too much Anno

It's weird that they're committed to this solid wall all the way along. They could easily put a lot of gaps in there, you could still have walkways connecting the sections, the underground train, etc... It would still be impressive and yet create wildlife corridors, room for movement among the preexisting tribes, etc...

Based on experience, the problem here would be regular maintenance. Everything looks nice when brand new, eventually urban decay creeps up. Elevators start failing, lights flickering, sewage system clogs up, ventilation starts malfunctioning....

What an insightful and thoughtful video. Thank you.

I’m not even an architect or involved in any sort of urban planning but I just know that this is possibly the dumbest idea one can think of 😂

One of the things Mohammed bin Salman shares with the techbros of Silicon Valley is how enamored they seem to be with utopian visions that require all-new, top-down construction *somewhere else* (that never *quite* deliver on the public good aspect with which they sell it) while ignoring the horrific problems that already exist right outside their own windows.

Well it’s a year later. They are building the line currently. I don’t think they spent enough time thinking about this shit, cause I think it’s gonna be a disaster.

I hadn't heard of this concept/project before. Your initial description of the different levels being built into it reminded me of the cityscape in a kind of dystopian sci-fi novel by Joan D. Vinge called Catspaw. In it, the city was built in layers, and over the years the lowest levels became the places where the poor and homeless lived, where all the crime was, where all the drug and other illicit trade was, and there was never any light. The only rain they ever got at the bottom was what dripped down from the upper layers, bringing with it all the dirt and grime and pollutants, washed down from the layers above.

i find it surprising that no one is talking about quality of life. the people that would live in this project would be wealthy, considering how much money would go into it and the advanced technology, meaning they already live in a pretty good position. why would they willingly move into the line? a place where you are essentially trapped in a confined space, everything looks the same, you loose touch with the real outside world, you loose the conception of size, etc. now i know that these technological inventions are supposed to improve quality of life, but i am having an insanely hard time imagining that no one will go completely mental after being trapped in this box for a considerable amount of time.

Even without the proper education, I could see that The Line was more of a vanity project than an actually well-planned, well-designed city that would take its inhabitants' needs in mind while being sustainable. This video confirmed all my reservations

Great to hear a critique on this project!

Love the videos from Dami!

As someone who's lived in that country, I can see how this idea came about. It was hot and someone was like, "Wouldn't it be so much nicer if everything was inside?" It's a thought everyone has when it's 120°F or higher 🙆‍♂️

Science fiction typically depict cities in a dome interconnected to each other. Even building cities in a dome to shields to shield themselves from the harsher environment is going to be extremely challenging. In that sense, Singapore Changi Jewel is a miniaturized version of a city in a dome.

You tube randomly brought me here, I could listen to her all nite. .. ❤️ great points, I think the ending speaks for itself.. if you're supposed to answer those questions in the literal sense.. well then we're either at an impasse or we already know the answer.

I saw a thumbnail for some crew called ‘Top Luxury’ a few minutes back for ‘Tokyo’s breathtaking 1 million person pyramid’. Yeah… breathtaking alright. Terminally claustrophobic more like. Residents would forming factions and fighting each other to the death for the chance to glimpse the sun and breath fresh air.

"At first I thought it was a Metaverse project" - What a great idea! They should create the city in VR now, as a test run, so people can really visualize what life in this city might be like.

The point you brought up about how open cities tend to be excellent grounds for the cross pollination of ideas struck me. It might be something that the designers themselves are aware of. It's virtually impossible to separate the politics of the region from a project like this, and I can't help but think that attempting to stifle that cross pollination might be part of the goal.

My first thought as a disabled person was -- how are will the disabled fit into this? But remember the culture this proposal is coming from. The disabled are mostly hidden in Saudi Arabia. It's an intriguing idea from a space station concept - like Babylon 5's five mile station. Even Star War's Corusant City showed how the dark valleys of the lower areas became. There seems to be several what I would call pie in the sky projects like this in that area. Like the island projects that have barely gotten started and lost inverters.

''This will be the greatest architectular wonder ever built!!'' A random sandstorm boi - ''Ahem....you guys never learn huh''