"The designs revealed today for the city's vertically layered communities will challenge the traditional flat, horizontal cities and create a model for nature preservation and enhanced human livability,"
This article and digital rendering has seemingly managed to convince you otherwise.
You have to protect the plants from the drought and humans from sandstorms. You can not cover a km wide 100m tall city, it has to be 200m x 500m. (numbers are arbitrary, but it has to be compact and as always, biger is cheaper, if 200x200 already covered "up" it is.
But of course the whole idea is just "clickbait".
Next you're going to say that a sky bridge 300m above the ground with a shin high guard rail is impractical.
One, you've got a giant vertical wall that can have building integrated PV for windows.
TWo, you've got a shaded area on the north side.
Three, they're building it partly undergound, which is good for hot climates.
Four, it's planned as a post-car, walkable city which in general is an exciting concept.
Five, it appears to be going for an enclosed living area, which is seen as dystopic by people who live in moderate climates, but has always made sense to me for regions with extreme weather (hot or cold) and doing it on a scale that might avoid the downsides of feeling like you're shut in.
Redundancy of infrastructure in a linear city strikes me as a potential problem, as is the fact that one end is near the sea and the other end just seems randomly inland. If there's some purpose to the location that I'm not aware of (joining two important places for example) then it's an interesting response to the 'organic' growth of sprawl that occurs when you have two cities linked by a fast communication route, by planning it in advance.
1. Minimize the perimeter to area ratio. This minimizes the interface with the outside, such as protective walls and access points. On the other hand, in linear city, everyone gets a nice view, albeit basically the same view.
2. Minimize distance between points. Putting everything on a line means increases the distance for point to point trips. In a 2d city, things are closer together. In a 3d city, even more so. This affects travel, networks, etc. Important / highly frequented things will cluster in the middle.
3. Enhance resilience. If there's a roadblock or problem in a linear city, the whole thing gets blocked. In a 2d city, you can usually just reroute around. This applies to travel, sewage, grid, etc blockages. Linear city is just asking for single point failures.
Many of these points fall apart when you consider American cities are built kind of like 1d cities around highways and such. The linear city is just admitting it upfront.
higher dimensions also increases the length public infrastructure laid down and number of routes. connecting a 5x5 grid needs twice as as many lines as a 1x25 grid.
Needs flat people, though.
Flatten people!
But the whole world would need to be in a straight line. "This is perfect: we'll make everybody live in a line!"
And, not realize that elevators move in a straight line because they hang on a cable. If you lay it on its side, it becomes a train, and can go anywhere the tracks bend to.
One of the things holding high speed rail back is the turning circle needed at high speed not fitting in existing rights of way, which were as straight as they could get away with at the time of building. And the inability to now just purchase a right of way directly between the two points of interest because it's owned by lots of different people.
If you were building a traditional circular city and rail at the same time, the main trains would radiate out in lines as straight as the terrain allows and you'd probably spend a great deal of money building bridges and tunnels to make that possible if the terrain wasn't flat.
If you were building two cities from scratch, and owned all the land between them, you'd almost certainly build a direct train line as straight as possible between them.
If you make that window reflective, now you have a bad mirror, a bad solar panel and a bad window
That's just weak light transmission! You made a bad window, Petey!
Please read on kafala system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system
Bonus negative points for treatment of women.
[]https://www.thenationalnews.com/gulf-news/2022/03/09/women-w...
[]https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2021/02/15/the-new-saudi-persona...
They treat women with respect and dignity. What are you talking about? Women feel safe there. My mom likes to live there. I know because I've lived there for 18 years.
They just recently were allowed to start driving.
They just recently were allowed to get a passport and travel freely without permission from male guardian.
Male guardian approval is required to seek an abortion.
Male guardian permission required to marry.
There is still much segregation and inequality.
Family laws skews towards males, as they become guardians.
Child custody also skews towards males.
It is quite distant from the freedoms women experience in the western world.
I won't even mention the treatment of migrant female workers.
> the treatment of migrant female workers
It's just some miscreant peoples. No need to blame the government. They are trying their best to fight it.
But a $trillion pile of empty, decaying buildings slowly being covered with sand need not be terrifying if you (like everybody else) don't go there.
The US made Vegas. And stopped.
Here's a question - what does this city produce? What industries could possibly exist in a city where the only way in or out is on a single line? How do shipments of goods for the grocery stores and restaurants and everything else get into the city? If I want to buy a desk, or a mattress, or anything else does it go on the maglev(s)?
The city seems to ignore the fact that building up is exponentially more expensive compared to building flat. Simply getting the material to the height it needs to be now requires a crane, not to speak of the transportation, accessibility, and plumbing issues.
Has anyone considered what would happen if there was a fire in the middle of the city? Would people be cut off from their jobs? What if repairs take weeks or months?If the maglev breaks the whole city goes with it.
Final point - building a city in the middle of the desert rather than somewhere cold with access to clean drinking water seems stupid in the face of climate change (or in general).
It feels like Saudi Arabia is trying to create the next Hong Kong. Maybe the linear city plan is more of a way to convince investors there's enough real estate room to expand. Or perhaps there's a reason to need an autonomous legal zone stretching from the Red Sea to inner Saudi Arabia.
