Aerial shots show the progress and scale of $1 trillion giga-project ‘The Line’ in Saudi Arabia
- The Line is one of the most ambitious man-made projects ever
- The horizontally-laid city will extend for 170 km and it’ll be 200 meters wide
- The project costs around $1 trillion
Published on Apr 20, 2024 at 7:00 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on May 03, 2024 at 7:11 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Amelia Jean Hershman-Jones
Construction of The Line – the massive $1 trillion project Saudi Arabia is working on – is well underway.
New drone footage shows how fast progress is being made – and it’s properly impressive.
It’s called The Line because it is literally a ‘line’ that extends horizontally for miles across the desert.
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The goal is to complete the project by 2030, and construction is well underway.
But we shouldn’t let the name fool us into thinking this is going to be a ‘thin’ line because it isn’t.
Designed by Santa Monica-based firm Morphosis Architects, the structure will be 105 miles (170 kilometers) long, 500 meters high, and 200 meters wide.
It almost looks like a horizontally laid-down skyscraper, in a way, except it costs more – a lot more – than a skyscraper.
The goal is to build a city that can fully support itself and accommodate up to nine million residents.
That equates to 8,350 acres or 13.5 square miles, making The Line larger than the Principality of Monaco and Gibraltar combined.
The city will include residential areas as well as commercial areas, along with its own stadium, a yacht marina, and other facilities like shopping malls and office spaces.
The Line will also have its own public transport system, making it possible to travel from one end of the city to the other in just 20 minutes.
The Line is part of a much bigger project called NEOM, which also includes a smart city, a mountain resort, and a water and hydrogen company.
It’s an ambitious plan, and an expensive one at that, because the entire NEOM project is estimated to cost $1 trillion.
The Line alone will cost $500 billion.
As part of the same project, Saudi Arabia is also building an upside-down skyscraper.
This too, just like The Line, is totally unheard of.
Put simply, the skyscraper will be built starting from the top, which is located at the peak of a mountain, and it will extend downwards, inside the mountain.
Last, but certainly not least, the Saudi Crown Prince is also planning a cube-shaped city.
It is going to be one of the largest man-made structures in the world.
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