Construction of Saudi Arabia’s futuristic city, The Line, is in full swing. In a new video, The Line’s development director boasted about the scope of the project and said work was progressing quickly.
“ The largest earthworks in the world »: this is how the construction site of The Line, in Saudi Arabia, is presented in a video, published on February 26, 2024 on YouTube. The images are indeed impressive: we can see an immense line drawn in the ground, which is lost in the horizon.
It is Denis Hickey, the development director of The Line, who presents the progress of the work in front of the camera. The city of the future imagined by Saudi Arabia is emerging from the ground: according to him, the work is progressing quickly, and “ the first phase of The Line will be finished in 2030 “. It is unclear what exactly he means by the “ first phase “. On the other hand, it is certain that the construction site is increasingly enormous, and that it is leaving an ever more harmful mark on the region’s ecosystem.
Photos of The Line’s work in February 2024
According to the video, “ millions of cubic meters of earth and water are moved every week “. Absolutely gigantic figures, but which do not seem exaggerated given the size of the site: the video shows battalions of cranes and hordes of trucks. The base of The Line has been dug very deep, and the work extends as far as the eye can see. Denis Hickey also indicates in the video that he “ carried out much of the foundation work “.
If the images are striking, it is also because they are always more dystopian. The Line is a very controversial city of the future project, launched by Saudi Arabia, which aims to accommodate 9 million people in a single building 500 m high, 200 m wide and 170 km long. Behind the promises of a civilizational revolution and a city without a carbon footprint, experts believe on the contrary that The Line will be a catastrophe for both humans and the surrounding nature.
The Line is not the only titanic project underway in the country: the linear city is part of Neom, a special region of the country which is to host several futuristic cities. Among the many projects announced, we find Oxagon, a floating city and an industrial center; Aquellum, a connected underground city; or Trojena, which is to be the first ski resort in the country, and work on which is also underway.
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