I saw some people who I respect very much yesterday saying that this idea was, well, nuts. They’re probably right. But then again, when you watch this video, ask yourself how people like you might have reacted, 130 years or so ago, to the first proposal for a skyscraper. Now, Skyscrapers dot almost every modern city in the world. Except Dublin, of course, where we’d be worried about them spoiling the, eh, stunning Dublin Skyline. Anyway, here’s the Saudi plan:
His Royal Highness announces designs for #THE_LINE, the city of the future in #NEOM.#SPAGOV pic.twitter.com/LDyQrMd0lF
— SPAENG (@Spa_Eng) July 25, 2022
Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t this idea actually…. Good?
When I was born in 1984, the population of the globe was about 4.7 billion people. In my lifetime, that number has close to doubled, to 7.7billion. While some people focus on demographic crises affecting certain countries – like Japan – the fact is that the globe’s population remains overall on a steadily upward trajectory. If that continues, we will need more cities. And we will need those cities to make use of less and less space. Building “up” is the future, not building “out”. This idea just takes that to the extreme.
Still, though, there are obvious limitations. Note that this video does not show an airport – because one of those can’t be fitted into a 500x200x20km “line”. Nor, either, can things like water infrastructure, or sewerage, or train stations, or, well, factories. We can be relatively certain that the residents of “The Line” will not be engaged in any industrial activities, or actually making anything. The people living in such a place will be software engineers and financial traders and so on. This is the city of the future for the uber wealthy, not for the plebs.
But it’s not just infrastructure. How do you fit a nightclub, for example, into that space? That’s probably not an issue in Saudi Arabia, where both alcohol and fornication are illegal, but it might be an issue if they wanted to export this concept around the world. What about sports for kids? Or Adults? “The Line United” won’t be winning the Champions League any time soon. My brother is a free range poultry farmer – if he exports food to “The Line”, then the food will have had more space and freedom to roam about than the people eating it will.
That’s why, I think, this whole concept is misaligned. You can see, from the gleaming walls, and leafy plants on the roof, that this whole idea is marketed at the tech savvy uber wealthy Greta-Thunberg loving socially conscious westerner. But those people aren’t very keen on similar concepts when presented to them: Think, for example, about the furore in Dublin in recent years over “co-living” and shared spaces. Even the most futuristic of us secretly aspires to our own home and a garden and a dog. When we have the money, that’s what most of us gravitate to. The more cramped and crowded and space-free an area, as a general rule, the poorer it is.
So perhaps cities like “The Line” are indeed the future, but it’s not likely to be the future presented here. My suspicion is that projects like this one, should they ever come to actually happen, will be downgraded versions that are not lived in by the gods of the corporate world, but by their cleaners and secretaries and workers. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that: People need good secure housing with access to food and medicine. I just doubt that this kind of thing will be anybody’s first choice.
Anyway, it wouldn’t work in Ireland. First, you’d never get planning permission. Second, the train going the length of the thing would take three hours, not twenty minutes. Third, the GAA team would probably win everything, and we’d have Joe Brolly calling for The Line to be split in two. Fourth, the line would add or subtract too many voters from somebody’s constituency and there’d be political war.
We’ll leave this one to the Saudis, and keep going with our one-off rural housing, I think.