Saudi Arabia has unveiled designs for a futuristic megastructure in the desert. But it is an idea that has preoccupied the imaginations of architects – and megalomaniacs – for generations
‘The contemporary city needs a full redesign,” purrs a seductive voice, over surging orchestral strings. “What if we removed cars? What if we got rid of streets? What if everything you needed was always a five-minute walk away?” The words accompany an animation depicting an oblong megastructure sprouting from a desert landscape, slicing through sand dunes and mountains in a continuous urban strip: a city of 9 million people, sealed inside a mirror-clad box. “A 170km revolution in urban living,” the narrator continues, “protecting the Earth’s most stunning nature, while creating unmatched liveability.”
Most cities don’t come with their own Hollywood-style trailers, but then most cities are not the Line. Unveiled in July, the project is the latest heady fantasy to emerge from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s marketing machine, garnering breathless headlines and torrents of clicks (its videos have 400m views and counting). The slick trailers promise a car-free, carbon-neutral bubble with its own temperate microclimate, where artificial intelligence will be “continuously learning predictive ways to make life easier”.
