A trillion wonders city, will it become the biggest unfinished building？
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Saudi Arabia is building a
Super exaggerated linear city
Such a sci-fi picture
I’ve only seen it in movies
It is my pyramid and will go down in history forever.
What makes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sigh so much is an exaggerated building-perhaps it is more appropriate to call it "the city" directly.
Just last week, Saudi Arabia officially announced an architectural plan called "The Line", which exploded in the global architectural circle.
This straight "line" is located in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, starting from the Red Sea, with a length of 170 kilometers, a width of 200 meters and a height of 500 meters, covering a total area of 34 square kilometers.
To put it simply, two super-long glass skyscrapers are parallel, and an entire city is sandwiched between them.
It will also become an important part of Neom, a new city in northwest Saudi Arabia.
Such a crazy architectural idea, which we only saw in science fiction movies before, is now going to become a reality?
But don’t be too happy, even in Saudi Arabia, which is "rich to the brim", it is not easy to build such a behemoth.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has competed with Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and wants to seize the name of "the most luxurious in the world" by countless grand and futuristic wonders.
These renderings are really beautiful, but what is the probability of completion?
01
A super-long linear city
The Line project is designed by American firm Morphosis, and the budget will reach an astonishing $1 trillion, which will be completed in 2030.
Such a huge volume, if calculated by a single building, will undoubtedly become the largest building in the world after completion.
Ben Salman said that The Line provides a brand-new concept of urban planning and design.
"The vertical hierarchical distribution of urban functions allows people to travel seamlessly in three-dimensional space, which we call’ zero gravity urbanism’."
Different from the layout of traditional cities radiating from the city center, The Line City, as its name implies, brings all functions together in this straight line.
Two super-long skyscrapers with a height of 500 meters enclose the outline of the city. By then, they will surpass our world financial center (492 meters) and become the 12th tallest building in the world.
The building extends all the way from the red sea to the mountains, 800 meters from the mountains, and then continues to extend to the desert. Because the surface of the building is covered with glass curtain wall, it is also called "Mirror Line", which is full of science fiction.
The 200-meter-wide area between the two buildings is the public area of the city.
These functional facilities are all three-dimensional-vertical farm layered farming, connecting canteens and kitchens, making urban residents’ food baskets self-sufficient; The stadium is located at a height of 305 meters, and residents run, play ball and have fun in the sky.
02
NEOM, the new future city of Saudi Arabia
Another major feature of The Line is environmental protection. It is completely powered by renewable energy. 95% of the land is divided into nature reserves, where sunlight, plants and natural ventilation are balanced.
There are no roads and private cars in this city, and countless sidewalks and bridges connect two buildings.
People can walk to the public station they want to go to in 5 minutes at most, then take the high-speed train to their destination and reach the other side of the city in 20 minutes.
When completed in 2030, The Line will welcome the first batch of 1.5 million residents. In the later stage, we will gradually expand and improve the functions, and increase facilities such as houses, shopping malls, parks and schools, which can accommodate up to 9 million residents.
For Saudi Arabia, this is actually very important, because it is also one of their original intentions to build a new future city NEOM in the northwest, and The Line is an important part of this new future city.
NEOM covers an area of 26,500 square kilometers. In Ben Salman’s vision, it will become a place where everyone in the world can leave their footprints with creativity.
"The world is facing an environmental crisis, and NEOM can provide the most imaginative solutions. We have a team of the brightest talents in engineering and architecture to realize these cutting-edge ideas."
Environmental protection is a signboard with great communication value, but it is not the whole of NEOM. With a huge investment of trillions of dollars, the crown prince is not thinking of doing "charity" for environmental protection.
As early as 2016, Saudi Arabia issued the so-called "Vision 2030", with the goal of diversifying the Saudi economy and getting rid of its dependence on oil.
NEOM, the new future city, is a trump card of Vision 2030.
The Line alone can provide 380,000 new jobs, and it is expected to provide Saudi Arabia with a gross national product of 47.9 billion US dollars by 2030.
03
What is the probability that the spectacle will end badly?
In the "Vision 2030", the big goal is ahead, and now Saudi Arabia is building a lot of buildings, and exaggerated projects are one after another.
Besides NEOM, another most famous project in Saudi Arabia is the Red Sea Project, which will be an important step for Saudi Arabia to become a "global luxury tourist country".
500 kilometers north of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a super-large luxury resort will be built, and 22 brand-new islands will be built on the Red Sea.
The participating big-name design firms include Kengo Kuma, Foster+Partners and Killa Design, and they will build a large number of seascape villas and desert tents on these islands.
In addition, they have signed contracts with 12 luxury hotels including Ritz-Carlton Seclusion, Magnificent, Liushan, St. Regis, Raffles and Addison. Magnificent and Ritz-Carlton Seclusion are scheduled to be completed and opened by the end of next year.
Building luxury hotels and wonders everywhere, wrestling with rivals such as the United Arab Emirates, and now the $1 trillion The Line is launched …
Is Saudi Arabia really so rich?
Of course, Ben Salman has his own small abacus, attracting investment all over the world with renderings, and plans to list NEOM in the new future city in 2024 to attract more investors.
But the problem is that the Saudi Crown Prince has a bad reputation in the West.
In particular, in 2018, his approval of the execution of Saudi journalist Kachouqi was exposed, which was widely resisted by the international community, and foreign investors in Saudi Arabia even withdrew their funds.
As a result, many magnificent buildings in the original plan were forced to stop the progress of the project, and even have been unfinished.
One of the most famous examples is the "Jeddah Tower" in Jeddah, which started construction in 2016 and has a design height of 1,008 meters. It is planned to surpass the Burj Dubai as the tallest building in the world.
Unexpectedly, in January 2018, construction workers suffered a collective strike of unpaid wages, reaching a height of 600 meters and stopping.
Originally expected to be completed last year, there is only a semi-finished product until now.
Today’s The Line is actually not optimistic about the outside world after the design scheme is announced, and some people even predict that it will be "a bad end".
On the one hand, the reason for funds is that the construction and implementation are too difficult.
For example, it is necessary to drill through the mountains and dig a huge tunnel with a length of 800 meters and 30 floors to let the skyscrapers pass.
In addition, high-rise buildings will be built on the ground in the desert where there is nothing, and 10 huge mansions will be built …
By 2030, can this imaginative "line" really end successfully?
Text, editor/cardic
Video/Fanfan
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Original title: "A trillion wonders city, will it become the biggest unfinished building? 》
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