MAJOR UPDATE: The Line has been reportedly been dramatically reduced by 98.57% from being 105 miles long to just 1.5 miles long... Oh boyy!!! QOTD: do you think my take on The Line is wrong? Do you think it will succeed? 👀
thank you for covering this subject - so many things at odds with the natural environment when building these "mega projects". Nothing but ego, wrapped in ignorance. Even if a project like this is completed you can't even begin to count all the unforeseen problems that arise in its wake.
Firstly, I am from Saudi Arabia and I do not speak English fluently, but I will try to clarify some points First, the NEOM project will be in the Tabuk region, which is an area in the north near Jordan, Syria, Palestine, and Turkey. It is a city I visited before, and it is very cold and snows in the winter and in the summer, a city with a wonderful atmosphere. Secondly, Saudi Arabia has been a tourist country since ancient times, and it is in advanced development with every king and prince, and naturally, there are some who mock my country. Thirdly, the NEOM project will successfully employ the most skilled workers on it, just as King Abdullah City and the King Fahd Project did. There are projects that were not implemented and were merely statements, as in America, China and France. We care about animals and birds so much, it is impossible not to consider this point. In addition, you did not find many animals in that area due to the difficulty of birds moving there, according to the NEOM project. You can see projects, permanent development and prosperity, and visit them for exploration, and not just read and information that may be wrong or insufficient.
Wish we still had GOT for it's disappointing how they ended it with season 6 where I guess the producers lost interest and it was complicated and hard. The Line looks far more complex. Wonder how the billionaires will do hosting this project? They'll fail again for they can't really run businesses nor direct countries on foreign and domestic policies. Look at how they're doing America and many other countries in the 2020's. Their global Great Reset will fail the citizens!
Yeah. I'm also worried for the conditions of the 'lower-job' workers, who will have to maintain this entire thing 24/7. They'll be getting accommodation in the worst parts of the building structure for sure - prob at more ground levels, rarely leaving their limited area to enjoy other parts, not seeing natural light for months, being overworked & underpaid, etc. While the foreigners & more 'upper class' ppl that Saudi wants to attract, will be somewhere at a top level ‐ with the plant microsystems & the holograms, natural light, luxury experiences, etc. It's something that reminds me of dystopian Sci-Fi movies. Hard for me to imagine it any other way realistically, given that there are already so many problems with foreign workers in the Gulf countries.
Yea totally agree, the amount of elevators and escalators alone that would need to maintained would be in the thousands! Imagine too, if this design ends up letting in and trapping sand and dust that ends up grinding away moving parts cutting their lifespan in half. Everything is interconnected in a line, if anything fails, or if things cant be maintained properly, it will have a ripple effect throughout The Line. A line also provides little flexibility to fix and maintain things, particularly so for thing’s like the rail system. This will end up being a very expensive place to live, where people would probably have to spend millions on purchasing a condo and pay outrageous HOA fees monthly and for what, to live inside essentially a shopping mall with endless views of sand and nothing to do outside The Line.
@@barnold23 But to be fair, I watched another vid since I made this comment, which said that workers will indeed be at lower levels, but will have equal access to natural light. Interesting that they emphasized this, but good that they have it in mind.👍
Hopefully no bone saws will be reserved for me for saying this, but... of course this will not succeed as described. Consider the following 1. Where will the sewage and garbage be processed for 9 million people and businesses? 2. High speed rail - how many stops will it make on the 100 mile route? if it's a 5 minute walk to the nearest train station, that suggests a stop every half mile, two hundred stops with acceleration, deceleration, stop, unload and load, for each one. This dramatically slows the average speed of the rail line, in addition to nausea-inducing acceleration and deceleration, and consuming vast amounts of energy, as well as wear and tear on the trains. 3. How will food and supplies be transported for these 9 million people? 4. What happens if there is a power failure? Suffocation? 5. How will toxic smoke from fires be managed along the great length of this structure? Until these questions are reasonably answered, this project is doomed.
It looks like it will be a robotic City rather than human City everyone will be working like a robot and there will be very less space to walk around. People would feel like a restrained life in a narrow strip
@@demongo2007 I hate phony projects that can't be built, because I'm not a Chump. I like real projects that inspire people with success, instead of the demoralize them with failure.
Nice to see a real person (as opposed to some disembodied AI narrator) pointing out the real world flaws of this completely bonkers fever dream. Keep up the great work! Subsrcribed.
A real entitled kid with her barbie doll in the drawer? Talking about things she has absolutely no clue about? Wow… gen-Z at its highest lows. Great. 😂
@@JohnDorian-j7x She calculated the emission of 20 years project into a 1 year. Maybe is a dystopian, unrealistic dream. But at least they think about the future. Our Western politicians just say we do not have money. But we are the countries that buy oil and gas from them. Or even products from China, where they can build nuclear plants and highways like nothing. Why can Dubai build a mega city and Europe have cities with old routes and buildings? She says propaganda, but we get only demotivation. Bad news every day, inflation, moral collapse, cancel culture... We can't say what is possible, we are lazy people. Without Elon Musk's dreams of Mars City, we have nothing. And even Elon Musk is for lot of people claun. But this claun did something, not like them.
You could apply a hiss filter to the mic signal to cut the hissing noise out in post-processing. APart from that, I'd like to see a small shard of this fully built. I'm pretty sure that they won't finish the whole project.
One aspect i haven't yet seen discussed about this project: does the project documantation offer anything about how the city would be dealing with the deceased?
This is mainly a project for shipping. The trains are meant to be fast for quick cargo transport from one end of the country to the other. I only realized that while watching this video.
@@NR-fd9wv I wish that were fictional, but what I said about NEOM is the one. Ok, you go get a job by working for it. Yea, the controlligarchs are megaomaniacs.
They are building a 170 Km long Swedish Rocket Stove. When the first apartment in The Line catches fire, the whole line will turn into a Fire Death Trap from which there will be no escape.
the line is like a very big shopping mall with apartment inside. who would want to live in a shopping mall? a good 1 hour strolling/sight seeing inside a mall is best i can do. but to live there.. what the fudge are they thinking?? i mean i get it if they will build something like this in a big space ship intergalactic travel or in planet mars. but in planet earth? why??
That part doesn't seem too weird to me. We don't really have malls here in the Netherlands in the way America does. Instead, new commercial areas are built with the stores on the ground floors and apartments above them. That way all of the city is in use 24 hours a day. You get large stores mixed in with smaller stores and bars and restaurants, gyms, GPs, offices, etc. In the end this project fails because putting everything in a line just isn't efficient. It's the elevator problem, but on its side. Give the line some spokes out the side every now and then would make it much more feasible.
Agreed. This is a space ship design. Why do on Earth? Else some said do a circle. Honestly, the cutting off nature migration (a line) is a real problem. How do wildlife get from one side to the other.
Yeah looks like they might have realised that $1 trillion on a unique and untested infrastructure based megaproject might have been a bit of a stretch. That 2.4kms still won't get finished I bet...
What I find interesting is the huge amount of resources that are required to build this monstrosity. Just imagine a 500 meter high and 158 kilometres long glass wall. Multiplied by 2, in order to cover both sides. Where in the world will all of this glass, that needs a special treatment to act as an heat shield, come from? How long is its lifespan? After all the sunlight is known for its ability to wear out any type of protection. Meaning that these glass panels will need replacement. How will this be achieved? Considering the weight of just one panel, a quit difficult task. Especially due to the height of this project. I could go on for ever! It is great to be innovative, but being so and at the same time using resources in a manner that doesn’t just waste them, can be an impossible challenge.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that doesn't self report themselves as a democracy. (Yes even North Kore, China and Russia call themselves democratic) Pointing out that the line is a bit despotic in nature doesn't bother them.
An enlightened monarchy is potentialy the best regime regarding to quality of life. Looking back to my country, thr biggest developement and of the highest quality was made by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, whereas the type of work that is done today is just by greedy investors trying to sell you low quality work for a high end price
@@NR-fd9wv I was refering to the likes of the AU monarchy, where long term benefits were put in front of the short term gain. Not in any way was I thinking about S. Arabia...
Gotta say highly impressed I have listen to a lot of talk on this subject but the pace in which you talked about it kept it very interesting. I will be watching more videos! Keep up the good work!
**Key designers of "The Line"** at NEOM include: - **Morphosis Architects** (Thom Mayne) - **Zaha Hadid Architects** - **Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture** - **Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)** These firms are responsible for the innovative and futuristic design of the linear city
this thumbnail, title and intro should make a viral video lets hope! one critique is that the video seems a bit gloomy especially around the postive aspects part. id love to see more critical but positive vibe takes on other controversial architecture
no thank you for the feedback!! I was trying a new editing style and was looking for dramatic music - I did not intend for the video to feel and seem gloomy all the way through - esp during the positive aspects part. will do better in the future! thanks
@@UnravelingArchitecture Nice job, but you need to think about your audio for the whole video. The music was too loud at times and many times you sounded way too close to your mic. Try no to over do it. You have a nice mic, you don't need it so close to your mouth for it to pick up your voice. Your overall message is being overshadowed by the audio itself.
It's honestly dystopian of how they designed the line, like its carbon emissions just to build it is insane and there is the possibility that their system will create a civil division as those closer to the top could have a higher quality of life compared to those on the lower levels
excellent point! I should've highlighted that in the video but you're exactly right - who does get to live at the top. I mentioned this in a previous comment but look up the movie snowpiercer. it's the same kind of concept just on a train... so those living at the lower levels might be experiencing a very different (dystopian?) reality of living in the line...
actually I go with you , In fact what you said was right basically this project "LINE" is indeed limiting access to environment what I think is that "AN ARCHITECT SHOULD BE THINKING OF CONNECTING MORE WITH NATURE RATHER THAN MAKING IT MORE FUTURISTIC AND COMPLICATED " . IT WILL SUCCEED IN THE DESIGN BUT NOT IN REALITY
Like I mentioned in the video, there are good instincts in terms of how to design sustainably. But logistically there should be so many more questions answered by now. I agree that nowadays there has been a surge of emphasizing the connection between humans and nature, rather than dividing the two. So I guess we'll see how it all plays out
I'm with you 100%... I think it is as sustainable as electro cars, the production and the out come will be detremental to our planet. + the horror of the created society at a time where social score is beeing implemented... Thank God I'm a namibian 🙏 The Gods must be crazy 😉
You're right on track! Having some experience in development, seeing claims they are 20% complete, I immediately knew this was going to be a colossal bust. Even if they complete the project, there can't be enough rich people in the world to occupy all of these high end resorts. This is saying nothing of a city operating within a linear set of walls. This will make the Dubai's World Island Resort look like child's play in its grand failure.
Mientras observaba el video y escuchaba las preocupantes deficiencias del proyecto en términos de sostenibilidad a lo largo de su desarrollo y ocupación, me di cuenta de que estamos evaluándolo desde la perspectiva de nuestra realidad actual. Lo estamos analizando a la luz del mundo tal como lo conocemos y vivimos en el presente. Sin embargo, ¿cómo se comportaría este proyecto en caso de una catástrofe nuclear a escala mundial? ¿Cuál sería su impacto y relevancia en un mundo postapocalíptico, un escenario que, esperemos, nunca llegue a ocurrir, si Dios lo permite? While watching the video and hearing about the project's unsustainable aspects throughout its development and occupancy, it occurred to me that we are currently analyzing it through the lens of our present reality. We are examining it in the context of the world as we know and live in today. However, how would this project fare in the event of a global nuclear catastrophe? What would be its impact and significance in a post-apocalyptic world, a scenario that, hopefully, will never come to pass, if it is God's will?
I wonder how they will populate it. Why would people want to live there? Are they going to be forced to live there? It's the old practice of creating a solution without saying what problem is being solved.
That laugh you have when describing this is fascinating and understandable on a serious scary subject. No matter how much money they try to show, they have , and there will always be investors forced, tricked , and sold into idealism . The name "The Line" is the first clue. In almost every way"line" can be defined is not anywhere most people would call home. Absolutely not from someone who you can't have a debate with. 💯❤️subscribed
Honestly, I am not sure if The Line is possible, in fact many of NEOM's projects are outright dystopian but the world needs it to work. It might just give people hope that we could divert ourselves from oil-based economies. Today's cities and urban centers are so unsustainable and living the way we are now, there is no way we will survive very long. Just look at the coffin houses in Hong Kong for goodness sake! The population is suppose to reach 10 billion by 2050, and where will all these people live, how could we even find rescources to feed them. Even uprooting entire forests won't save us for long, using technology and finding new ways of urbanization might be the only thing to save our planet! I am very skeptical about it working, but there are too many bets on it to fail, we just need to keep investing and risking our money because we are playing with our future. Anyway, sorry for the long paragraph😅
Its a new concept that tries to create a 21st C living experience. Most critics (i hv seen so far) are Westerners.Brings a racial dimension to the debate. MbS is committed to his vision. Those who,'buy into it," will support him.
Hmmm. Maybe Saudis are just not in the habit of publicly criticising their royalty for... some reason or other? Also, most critics just point out that the project is fundamentally dumb and relies heavily on non-existing technologies to solve self-inflicted problems, and they would do the same with the same glee if, say, Elon Musk came up with the plan.
@@donerskine7935 The same Westerners who cant see their own economies imploding because of excessive debt;money printing;unnecessary wars;increase defense budget at the expense of social service provision;expensive energy;decline in std of living;loss of competitiveness;de dollarization;etc...commenting on MbS's projects??? Nope! No sense whatsoever.
Suggesting non Western people would enjoy being trapped inside a mall prison seems slightly racist also. It's creating a science fiction version of a 21st century living experience, not a practical one.
Hub and spoke rings would be better. Which airport is better? DFW or Tampa? That's a good analogy. Everyone hates DFW because it is spread out and you walk a mile to get where you need to go, but everyone loves Tampa International because of the hub and spoke design and ease of getting from point a to b.
i do wonder if they were inspired by urban 3 story malls? ok in all seriousness this design would be a great design for a squared version of a mall. call it the square line mall? they reduced the size from 105 miles to just 1 and a half miles now. as to your last line in this video 'the death of malls in America' ?? the 3 i frequent are busy from open to close. especially on Friday Saturday and Sunday. these malls are a madhouse to get into and out of on those 3 days. maybe the malls you are referring to were poorly planned in a dying population? maybe the malls are outdated and will not refurbish them ( re the Kmart Effect) to be up to date and modern with building and fashion as well as current food trends. you have to keep up or be left behind. their investors understand that and a return on their investment. although i would rather invest my money is something more stable then current trends. sorry for the long response. have a great day everyone.
In the symphony of atmospheric constituents, carbon dioxide orchestrates a pivotal role, comprising a mere 0.02% of the atmospheric ensemble. This seemingly fractional component, however, assumes paramount significance in the botanical realm, where it serves as the quintessential sustenance for the verdant tapestry of plant life. The metabolic choreography of photosynthesis, a ballet of light and biochemical alchemy within plant chloroplasts, is reliant upon the atmospheric presence of carbon dioxide. As the principal substrate, carbon dioxide undergoes a sublime metamorphosis, transmuting photons into chemical energy and yielding life-giving oxygen as a lyrical exhalation. This grand performance not only propels vegetal growth but also underpins the flourishing biospheric panorama, nurturing the intricate interplay of ecosystems. In short, if we fall below .02% CO2, plants will stop growing. Food for thought, The sustainability of humans is at risk.
They're already scaling it back according to the Guardian as of April 10, 2024 because of budget constraints. _Just a mile and a half_ is expected to be finished by 2030 out of 105 miles...
It's an insane task. I would never want to live in something like that, I'm more of an all American suburban type 😂 I might stay in a hotel their. I'm happy my money or tax contribution isn't involved but I do hope it succeeds, it's super interesting but in my opinion, nobody alive today will be around to see the completion of "The Line". Maybe it's because I'm just used to seeing government projects go way over budget and timelines.
I hope they will build this thing because of two reasons... On the one hand, if they will spend all their money for this thing, they can't spend it for worse things like war, weapons or AIs. And on the other hand, we will have a very nice lost place in the future, where we can make great youtube videos....
It is for an oil country, they have to invest in infrastrcture now while they have Trillions in oil money so they have an economy beyond oil when it runs out. So now is the best time to invest. (Whether it's the right investment, I'm not qualified to judge).
Perhaps you could take note of Pr Jacques Fresco's Venus Project and, through your audience, give it a new lease of life worldwide, which is far more ambitious in every respect. and thank you very much for this video !
Oh yeah that Venus Project stuff was exactly as ridiculous as this. People who don't live near nature are SO weird. They genuinely don't understand how badly we all need it.
Looking at google maps, you can see that they have already started to flatten(?) terrain at a length of 62km. I think it's a bad idea to start building at such a length at once. The only way that I see for at least a slight chance of success would be to buld it, well, linear. Starting at one site and build a segment and when this is functional and working, buld the next segment and so on. This offers the chance to learn from the first attempts and change faulty or bad design at the next. And if it turns out that it doesn't work as intended, you can just stop, without having spent tons of money for something that never goes operational. From my understanding, the advantage of a city is the fact to have all things, buisnesses and so on concentrated in a small area that is reachable for every resident. The line is pretty much the opposite of that, stacking up infrastructure up to 500m which makes transportation much more expensive and then build the same over and over again in a straight line...
Thanks for this honest and frank assessment. The ridiculous vanity projects coming out of the Arab states are such a horrible waste of resources all in the mismanaged pursuit to move away from an oil extraction economy. I have to problem with the goal of minimizing their dependence on oil but each project is a vain glorious ego stroking horror that is aimed only at the ultra wealthy. They would do nothing to help develop a real economy that would serve the citizens of these countries, but would only be playgrounds for the wealthy Arabs. How long will these places last without food or water or workers to provide maintenance or supplies? They all look like movie concept art. Are they consulting with real architects and engineers? Are the architects and engineers just taking as much money as they can no while it lasts?
The Line is a carless city created by the Crown Prince who owns dozens of luxury and supercars plated in gold. The good Prince showing his people the way by example... 🙄
too soon to predict that. I doubt that a project of such gigantic scale will be built in one go, but rather in phases where the first ones will be "tested" out for all the "unforeseen issues & untested applications" that have been highlighted by many experts, before continuing it. Ultimately, it's the "test of time" that will determine the success or failure of the project.
I find it hard to believe that with the expertise and calibre of people who planned and are building this, they somehow overlooked basic issues like that you mention in this video. Even I thought The Line sounded like a bad idea, for example just the social aspect of living in a place like that is not appealing at all, let alone all the other issues, but I assumed they would have already thought of all that. How can they have overlooked all this with so much cost at stake?
The cost of this thing would be insane. Multiple trillions. This seems like a "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" situation. Someone must have gotten rid of all the people who pushed back on him.
You have some good arguments but overall I still believe it will work. What's getting me thinking however is that you have more than one city being planned and being developed here. As I understand it, this whole region will also operate under more Western laws and regulations. What I'm curious about socially is how do you manage one country with two legal and social systems? You have compounds or gated communities in the middle east where you can get a glimpse of this, but I'm curious what the implications are when you do it on a massive scale? How will the these different regions interact with each other? Are they assumed they will socially merge in the future? What if the differences between the societies and culture deepen?
I agree it will never be completed for many reason. With or without sustainable energy makes no difference. Besides that , 9.000.000 people ? It will be impossible just to put 1.000.000 - 1.500.000 people there.
I believe this project will work however I would suggest building it in sections of 2Km at a time to prevent problems, costs etc. The mirror facade should be just glass not mirror in order to let sunlight in whenever needed. This project will also solve the biggest problem Saudi Arabia faces when building cities and that is sandstorms.
I get being optimistic about this project, but like many mega projects before it, the chances are high it will fail. As the production of its first section alone will either make it or break it. Even if it does get completed, next to nothing about The Line will function as they claim as its very likely it will need outside power sources to keep everything running and its maintenance costs would be ungodly high due to its inefficient design.
I like what you're saying well. I hope the Prince didn't watched this. Apparently people go missing when they say anything negative about him and his Ideals.😢
All the architects are from the west. It's just rich despots throwing money at respected firms and said firms just want the money, regardless of if it works or not.
It’ll take a hundred years more to fully realize it as it’s presented, and that’s if the myriad of reasons for it to stall and fail are somehow miraculously overcome. As another person analyzed, these are about as tall as the Petronas towers and figuring you’d need about 100 of them per Km at a cost of around 1.5B USD, over 170km you’d be looking at 25.5 Trillion USD and that doesn’t include the myriad of bridges connecting the two walls or the metro system. It’s financially unaffordable. But then factor in it also presumes a demand based on population growth and data has been showing most of the developed world populations are in decline, raising serious doubt that there’s any such need for a new city for 9M people at all. It’s DOA. They could spend fractions of the money on many other investments that would have far greater value for humanity. They can sprinkle pretty renderings all over it but it doesn’t change the base realities of humanity and cities as organisms
The whole thing fills me with dread. $500 billion? What a joke. All projects run over cost and this will be the same. How the hell did it get approval?
Thanks for sharing this. Have you seen the plans for the city by Flannery Associates that bought up farm land around near Travis AFB to make their own community? Followup question, with so many bankrupt abandoned cities why don't the rich just rejuvenate those places (rough and ready,CA or any other abandoned properties around the world) ?
The "advantage" of the line over other cities is the ability to separate the rich from the poor. It will be a tourist place with no beggars, no thieves, no sad looking children, no graffiti, no signs of poverty. You cannot even accidentally end up in the poor section of town. One end of the line will be where tourists and rich people enter and live. The other end will be where the workers and their families live ie the poor people. This will work because it gives tourists what they want, guilt free vacations. When this succeeds more places will use this approach, separation of poor people in an effective way. This is designed to lock in class distinctions permanently. It's like that terrible movie about the train, without the cannibalism.
Someone hasn't done their sums. Its just pure simple maths. Walls 500m tall x 200m wide x 1m depth = 100,000 cubic metres. Length 170km or 170,000m is 170,000 x 100,000= 17,000,000,000sqm or 17bn cubic metres. At a cost of $1tn dollars $1,000,000,000,000/17,000,000,000= $58 cubic metre. That's without carbon neutral power stations, a train that will take to from end to end in 20 minutes, an airport or external sanitation and water facilities. Population density for 9m people 6x greater than the most populously dense city in the world, Manilla causing crowding. $58 a cubic metre?? I don't think this is going to happen.
They seem to be obsessed with tourism for some reason, despite they own Mecca which gets so many visitors there is a quota to limit it. Just expand Mecca for more people and they got their tourism.
According to the latest updates, the project has been significantly scaled back to 98%, as the necessary investments are not forthcoming in the near future.
@@UnravelingArchitecture It's all over the news; search RU-vid. Investments aren't coming anytime soon, and the technologies MBS is dreaming of don't exist yet. It sounds more like science fiction. He might not even be around by the time these technologies finally exist.
@@UnravelingArchitecture It's all over the news; search RU-vid. Investments aren't coming anytime soon, and the technologies MBS is dreaming of don't exist yet. It sounds more like science fiction. He might not even be around by the time these technologies finally exist.
@@UnravelingArchitecture It's all over the news; search RU-vid. Investments aren't coming anytime soon, and the technologies they're dreaming of don't exist yet. It sounds more like science fiction. Anyone of us might not even be around by the time these technologies finally exist.
So much about it seems crazy. I'm with those who think it will be a failure. The reflective facade....why? Why not wider and more under ground? Start making clean (zero CO2 emission) concrete and steel. Then make it bit at a time in blobs not a straight line. Such a waste of money and CO2 budget.
Seems doable to me....imagine what is like to be on a Cruise ship. Now imagine thousands of cruise ships lined up in the desert. Efficiency will be the name of the game.
This whole project looks like an AI got the task of creating a "project" around the top 20 tech/eco/social/etc. buzzwords of the time, and then a CGI team was tasked to put it into CGI.
