Saudi Arabia’s wildly ambitious plan to build 500m tall, mirrored, 170km long parallel skyscrapers, forming a 1.5M population desert city has been curtailed to 2.4km long.

The news was broken by the financial news publication Bloomberg, which said that Saudi Arabia’s government had “scaled back its medium-term ambitions” for Neom, of which The Line is the most significant sub-project.

The Saudi government had hoped to have 1.5M residents living in The Line by 2030, but this has been scaled back to fewer than 300,000, according to the report. It is unclear how it intends to house a higher concentration of people considering the proposed length (and therefore area) has been massively slashed.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The stupidest idea for a city that I’ve ever heard has gotten marginally less stupid.

    At least now you can get from one side to the other quickly in an emergency.

    Not that they’ll even build these 2.4 km.

    • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Ask anyone who’s ever built a house and they can tell you what a stupid fucking idea it would be to have a foundation that large.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Even if they somehow had some magical way to solve the foundation issue, with the original plan… could you imagine having to go from one part of the city to another for pretty much any reason? In a linear city? You better hope that other part is really close. Especially if it’s a personal medical issue or a dying loved one.

        • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Also: this city has only one road. How is traffic going to be? Better hope you somehow get a flat near your work, and that everyone else does too, and that nobody ever moves or cha’mnges job for any reason. This is such a horsehit project I’m surprised the guy who proposed it didn’t get thrown out of the window like in the meme.

          • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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            7 months ago

            Their plan was to have most people commute by train and have a veritable army of self-driving trains. That’s easily the most well thought part of the harebrained idea.

            • Zron@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Not just train

              Hyperloop

              You know the thing that totally exists and wasn’t a scam to stop California from installing high speed rail that would cut into a certain company’s EV sales.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Never mind commuter traffic, imagine how long it would take necessary commodities to the right places in a timely manner!

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    Like I said- if you need to get to the other side of a normal city, you can avoid congestion by taking a different route.

                    In a linear city, there is only one route. If there is a traffic jam or a train derailment in a linear city, there are no alternative routes. Not even for an ambulance.

            • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              I never looked into it more than a tertiary “Holy shit that looks dumb,” and yet somehow it’s even dumber than I thought!

          • Lath@kbin.earth
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            7 months ago

            I thought the proposed plans had multiple level high speed rails inside?

    • DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      I think it came up like this: Saudi king at his last visit at Chinese Wall. „Uw, one can see it from the space? That’s awesome.“ At home: „Servants, build something as big as the Chinese Wall that is visible from the space, so everyone sees how great I am.“

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              I live in the city (Terre Haute, Indiana) where Mr. Kashoggi, the man who was murdered by MBS, went to school (Indiana State University) and there was very little outcry, which saddened me greatly.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Honestly, that is not a big Terre Haute problem today compared to a lot of Indiana. While it is still by far majority white, there is a sizable black population compared to a lot of other Indiana towns this size and there’s no “black part of town,” it’s thoroughly integrated. As far as Kashoggi is concerned, there also is a large enough local Muslim population to support a mosque. ISU is also a progressive school despite being in Indiana they are very big on multiculturalism. I don’t know what the Muslim population of the school is, but enough that you would notice and the school does have public celebrations of holidays like Eid, so it was actually surprising.

                  Now, I admit that was not always the case. In fact, a little over a century ago, Terre Haute was the site of an absolutely horrific lynching of a black man. And, of course, since this is Indiana, there is not a total lack of racism. But compared to other parts of the state I’ve been to, it’s doing relatively well on that front.

                  • Confused_Emus@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    I was thinking more of the systemic racism that’s supposedly not a thing in America depending on how far in the sand one’s head is buried. Definitely happy to know sentiments are improving locally, though.