Featured Image Credit: Neom
Topics: World News, Technology, Weird
Tom Wood
A new video has shown the concept behind Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion skyscraper that will stretch for 75 miles and stand 500m tall.
They’ve described it as a ‘revolution in civilisation’ and ‘the future of urban living’, but it’s actually called ‘The Line’ or 'Neom'.
Honestly, once it gets made it’ll be a wonder of the modern world, giving every single person living there an incredible view the world surrounding it, whilst also – they claim – working with nature instead of against it.
Here, take a look at the video and see what you make of it:
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Basically, instead of a traditional city, they’re proposing a huge mirror-sided building that stretches for miles across Saudi Arabia and 500m into the sky.
Homes, businesses, and everything else will be stacked up across the 200-metre span, whilst journeys from end to end will take just 20 minutes, the company behind it has claimed.
They also claim that most things will be reachable for residents within a five-minute walk.
If brought to completion, the line will also be the world’s tallest building.
The city of Neom – as it will be known – will have vertical layers of building for every aspect of life, connected by walkways and tunnels.
Planned as a zero-carbon emission city ‘without cars, roads and emissions’, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has announced that NEOM will showcase a new way of living for the future, running on ‘100 percent renewable energy’.
It certainly looks like something from the distant future, but this project could come to fruition much sooner than that.
The idea is that the construction will be ready by 2030, although some have warned that it could take 20 years longer than that.
Speaking at an event in Jeddah during which the new video was shown, the Crown Prince said that the city could be home to nine million people.
He said: “We cannot ignore the livability and environmental crises facing our world’s cities, and NEOM is at the forefront of delivering new and imaginative solutions to address these issues.
“NEOM is leading a team of the brightest minds in architecture, engineering and construction to make the idea of building upwards a reality."
“The city's vertically layered communities will challenge the traditional flat, horizontal cities. The designs of The Line embody how urban communities will be in the future in an environment free from roads, cars and emissions."
Despite their lofty claims and ideas, as well as the backing of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, concerns have been raised about the development ‘displacing’ people from the area.
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