Saudi arabia's $1 trillion project has officially begun

Saudi Arabia’s The Line at NEOM, is an upcoming futuristic linear city, which will be built using “a lot of artificial intelligence to design through a digital twin backbone,” NEOM’s executive director Giles Pendleton said in an internal interview.

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The project is part of the $500 billion NEOM project, a futuristic city with a mixed-use development, containing spaces for work, play and living.

“We’ve got to build quite a lot of real estate in a short space of time. Well, we’re not actually building THE LINE. We’re assembling it from a series of modular pieces that are pre-engineered and predetermined as to what they do,” Pendleton said when asked about building a new city of nine million inhabitants in a short period of time.

The linear city, which is being built in the kingdom’s north-west Tabuk province, recently saw excavators digging a wide trench in the desert.

The Line’s mirror facade will allow the city to seamlessly blend into the nature around it. With a reduced infrastructure footprint, the linear city will have no roads, cars or emissions, running on 100 percent renewable energy with 95 percent of land preserved for nature. The city is built to prioritise health and well-being over transportation and infrastructure.

The city will be just 200 metres wide but 170 kilometres long and 500 meters above sea level with ideal climate throughout the year and a high-speed rail offering residents end-to-end transit in 20 minutes.

Pendleton also revealed that The Line will have a “one door-lock system.”

“But, if we need 100 million of them, then it’s easier for us to set up a factory and create exactly the same block 100 million times. We will create a very simple process with optimised, standardised and industrialised production whereby things are made in factories in large-scale volumes within NEOM – so that we don’t have to transport them far. Think of it like a giant assembly kit. The great thing about pre-engineered parts is that you can control quality and you can control dimensions, so that things connect.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said “The Line” will embody “Zero Gravity Urbanism,” where city functions are layered vertically.

“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,” he said in a statement.

The crown prince said The Line “will tackle the challenges facing humanity in urban life today and will shine a light on alternative ways to live,” adding that residents will be able to reach all daily needs within a five-minute walk in “The Line,” where public parks and pedestrian areas, schools, homes and places for work are “layered.”

There will also reportedly be a high-speed rail with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes.

Source: https://www.arabianbusiness.com