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one of the world's most controversial and ambitious Mega projects worth one trillion dollars recently went from paper to construction site I'm talking about
the line a 100 mile long 660 foot wide 1640 foot tall mirrored City being built in the middle of
the Saudi Arabian Desert most people thought it was a crazy idea a pipe dream full of conceptual
art that would never be built and yet here we are what's this project all about can it really
work and what does it mean for you and me this project is mired in controversy there's all sorts
of issues stemming from Saudi Arabia to begin with and everything else but I think there's
enough of an engineering angle here to make it interesting I think there's going to be things
that we can learn from this project but let's find out I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter in the world and holds almost one-fifth of the world's
proven oil reserves oil represents 80 percent of the country's exports accounting for almost
half of the country's GDP this dependency on oil creates a big problem for countries like
Saudi Arabia since it makes their economies rely heavily on fluctuating oil prices and demand the
Saudis know this full well and it's why the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman created the country's
long-term development roadmap dubbed Saudi Vision 2030. the plan is a strategic framework meant
to diversify the Saudi economy reduce its oil dependency and create a new vibrant and thriving
Arab Society or at least that's the plan in 2017 as part of this Vision 2030 Crown Prince unveil
plans to build a 500 billion dollar Mega project called Neil during a future development initiative
conference this project that wasn't ambitious enough was later expanded to one trillion dollars
so what is Neo neom which means new future it's a massive of infrastructure development project
that spans 10 000 square miles in the northern tabuk region of Saudi Arabia bordering the Red
Sea it's actually a collection of four main Mega projects throwhena octagon a collection
of luxury Island destinations in the Red Sea and the flagship Mega city project the lot the lion
is pitched as a futuristic linear City starting in the Red Sea's coast and stretching approximately
west to east in a 106 mile long straight line the line crosses four different ecologies including
coastal regions a desert the habul a laws mountain range and ends in the valley beyond the city will
be sandwiched between two flat parallel vertical facades 500 meters tall almost as tall as the One
World Trade Center in Manhattan completely covered in mirrors the top of the structure will be open
to allow outside air to naturally flow in creating a controlled micro climate inside the 200 meter
wide spaced between the outer walls would be the city itself this whole city is actually designed
as part of a series of modular segments they refer to as you unique communities that contain all the
services and amenities that a person would need to live comfortably within a five minute walking
distance in principle you wouldn't need to move any further than your unique local community to
satisfy your every need so there's no need for cars in the line this they claim will make the
city completely carbon free with no emission the way they plan to accomplish this is by organizing
the layout into this new three-dimensional Concept in urban planning they call zero gravity urbanism
and this is where my engineering mind starts screaming inside my head especially because
what they've been showing so far is a series of Concepts and animations with entire inverted
forests suspended hundreds of feet in the air with huge trees growing upside down more on that in a
minute City functions will be divided into three main layers a lower spine layer with all the main
Transport Systems that interconnect the different communities a service layer on top that will be
run mostly autonomously and will be invisible to most people and a pedestrian layer where people
will well walk around and live their life but all that being said it is really hard to figure
out just from these renderings which are pretty much the only real source of public information
just exactly what the line is going to be but it does seem that only The Pedestrian layer is above
ground and it includes all the actual buildings encased within the mirror facade upon completion
the line is expected to house 9 million residents in a 34 square kilometer footprint that's roughly
the same population as New York City but occupying less than a 20th of the total surface area so one
of the key perks that got me interested is that the line will be a car free City a truly well
thought out and designed community that wouldn't need cars like most cities today most movement
will happen vertically as we move from one building to another that's stacked on top of
each other this of course will require thousands of elevators and escalators and other levels of
complexity if we want to move around further there will be an ultra high-speed transit system that's
supposed to get you from one end of the line to the other in just 20 minutes meanwhile here in
California 10 years later and building the dogs over budget we have very little progress on her
rapid lives but I'm sure they could probably do it that means that this transit system will be faster
than any other built to date since it would have to travel around 317 miles an hour considering
all the time it would take and all the speeding up and slowing down between each stop based on these
requirements the system that most likely would fit would be elon's hyperloop which could reach
theoretical speeds of 700 miles an hour but so far in Prototype Farm has only reached about 288
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trips Saudi Arabia already invested 175 million dollars in the company volacopter to develop and
manufacture air taxis that will carry people around the city the first 15 aircraft should
be in the air by 2024. I don't think that's probably going to happen but I digress we'll
get back to my opinions here shortly another key trait of the line is that it will work with 100
renewable energy coming from solar and wind both of which are abundant in Saudi Arabia but their
bet is more like the Japanese since they're also building a 5 billion dollar green hydrogen plant
with the American company Air Products and chemicals which will be the biggest in the
world how about water well water would have to be supplied by desalinating the Red Sea since there's
literally no surface water in the entire country no rivers or lakes that's one of the unique things
about Saudi Arabia there are several new promising desalination Technologies being developed like a
series of huge solar heated domes made by the uk-based solar water pick it'll be the first of
its kind so fingers crossed all right so that's water electricity how about food well food is a
little bit trickier because they don't really have much to say about it just yet so there's nothing
really in the region no farmland or anything else all the food would need to be either produced in
the city or shipped in from somewhere else the project does integrate vertical farming throughout
the structure which should be a stable source of food but they don't say much in the way of stable
sources of animal protein or livestock by now we've discussed most of the more or less specific
details of the mega project but the line is also supposed to include some rather bizarre features
the most notorious of which besides the inverted forests that are going to go upside down is a fake
moon made out of drones I mean why do they even need that we have the real moon and there's going
to be no roof on the structure but apart from that you can expect a mechatronic Jurassic Park
and wait for it robot boxing Real Steel style so that's pretty much what we know about the line
but that doesn't really answer the question of why is Saudi Arabia building it in the first place as
I mentioned a minute ago neom is supposedly a way for them to diversify their economy and to make it
less dependent on oil revenue and I think we can all be in favor of that because any country that
really leans into oil today isn't looking very good for a future where oil is going to become
rarer and less needed real estate Development and Tourism are two promising industries that have
already been proven to work well in Dubai but more than that the plan is to attract business in a big
the line is located strategically in the center of major global trading route being eight hours
or less away from almost 70 percent of the world population there are already direct flights from
neom to London and Dubai with many more coming as the city grows the line will be a free trade zone
with its own autonomous judicial system which is important considering that Saudi Arabians
government has a pretty sketchy reputation regarding civil liberties freedom of speech
labor laws and women's rights but will these new laws be more open and what does a Judicial
System that's autonomous mean and who programs it especially if it's coming from a totalitarian
regime those are things that we're going to have to just wait and see so let's start breaking down
this project the first question to pop into my head when I saw the promotional video was why
cover the whole thing in mirrors the mirrors will reflect part of the scorching desert sunlight away
from the facade keeping the inside cooler this will be necessary to keep the line from turning
into a huge solar oven but it still has some serious drawbacks a glass facade in the desert
is challenging for several reasons covering this huge wall with mirrors is not only expensive by
reflecting so much incident sunlight back out what would that mean for local Wildlife birds
and other animals second mares will need cleaning and replacing especially after the desert sand
wears them down considering each facade will have a surface area of roughly 1 billion square feet
equivalent to over 30 000 football fields covered with mirrors on each sides of the line there will
be huge maintenance costs involved just imagine what cleaning those mirrors will be like it takes
36 workers three months to clean the outside of the Burj Khalifa which has around 1.2 million
square feet of glass the line would be almost 2 000 times as much then again perhaps it'll all be
automated Roomba style the next question is why a line a circle for example makes so much more sense
because it would be way more efficient it makes everything closer and allows the construction of
multiple Transport Systems that don't need to be theoretical hyperloops and with a 1600 foot
tall wall shielding the center of the desert they could make a real Oasis in the middle
making it a line seemingly doesn't make sense to me I've always had a hard time squaring that
that thought but maybe by making it modular and making every little part of the line piece by
piece and maybe at first you only have a couple of hundred meters of the line and maybe in 2025
you add a few more and by doing it that way there's a modularity impact I'm not sure or
maybe they're really keen on a hyperloop system it's hard to say but it's it is what it is the
line does sound better than the circle the line yeah the line a little more catchy than the circle
that's a fair point then there's the issue of the Earth's curvature is the city going to be truly a
straight line or will it have a bit of a Bend to allow for the Earth's curvature unless you're a
flat earther then just ignore this part and fast forward the latter is the most logical option
because drawing a straight line from one end of the globe to another will obviously pass through
the ground and in this case it'll sink about 1800 feet below the surface at the center so more than
a line it should probably call it the arch another issue with being a line going east to west would
be sunlight since the city will be located at approximately 28 degrees latitude is very close to
the Tropic of Cancer meaning that the mid-summer the sun is almost directly above the line shining
down in all of its Glory until dawn or dusk but during most of the rest of the year Sunshine will
always be hitting it at a incident angle from the south leaving the northern side of the line pretty
constant and Shady throughout the day I'm also wondering if the city would realistically produce
its own food this is going to be a big concern in the middle of the desert yeah you can add solar
you can make electricity but food is a challenge the world's biggest vertical Farm is in Dubai and
it produces about 2 million pounds or about 1 000 tons of leafy greens every year using a total of
330 000 square feet of real estate the average American adult eats around 2 000 pounds around
one ton of food every year so the line would need to produce around 9 million tons of food annually
to feed its Target population that's equivalent of three billion square feet or around 106 square
miles of vertical Farm taking up an entire eight levels of the whole city this shouldn't be too
much much of a problem considering that there will be about a hundred stories in total so eight
stories out of 100 to feed all those people but it'll also require a ton of energy vertical Farms
mean you have shade on each level and you have to provide its own LED grow lights and stuff and
how about at night you have to have batteries there's as many questions as there are answers
at this point probably so apart from that there are also questions about the danger of fires or
infectious disease spreading inside the line and what about earthquakes a rigid structure this size
is unlikely to survive even a minor earthquake it would have to be flexible enough to withstand
such forces and what about the wind the wind is going to be a challenge in this region of the
world and it is a major issue with slim towers and large structures with huge amounts of surface area
if the whole thing starts vibrating and reaching its resonant frequency because of the wind it'll
shatter into a million pieces especially with all that glass but all of these issues aside
the fact that the line is actually already started construction really does mean something they have
a team of world-class Architects and Engineers who probably know what they're doing yeah no
so maybe they've already thought of every one of these problems and they have Solutions and
they'll share them with us in the coming years so that's a look at the neon line and their progress
look I know there's a lot of different directions we can go with this but ultimately what I think
is cool is they're actually trying it there's an innovation they're trying new things and there's
going to be Lessons Learned and maybe other countries will do similar things or maybe not
in a lot of ways I'm almost thinking they're terraforming right it's kind of like the first
foray into learning how to build habitats on Mars maybe because the temperatures and the weathers
that they have and the lack of resources is very inhospitable maybe not Mars level but there's
sure to be things that we can learn from this so much of urban planning is just individual homes
we don't really think about larger building blocks of a City Las Vegas comes to mind as
a perfect example I don't think when they built Vegas pretty recently like in the 50s that they
planned it would become the big monstrosity that it is today and as a result it's really hard to
get around during CES to go from one convention to another convention like a mile away it took
like 45 minutes because the road traffic was so bad they should have trains that run underground
all day long they don't you know why because they didn't plan poor planning is at the heart of a lot
of our issues that we face and if this line and the mirrors and the glass and all these complex
things that seem kind of crazy pan out but you can imagine how much Heating and Cooling cost
would be required for each individual house could it be worth it on a bigger scale are there other
pros and cons or trade-offs that's the sort of stuff I think we need to learn just like when a
company builds a new aircraft it's very ambitious very risky that takes a lot of challenges but at
the end of the day we have to keep moving forward we can't just keep doing things the
same way so for that reason I'm I'm optimistic and who knows we'll try to get out there and do
a video as they progress in the coming year or so all right that is a look at neom thank you
so much for watching if you like this video check out that one next I think you'll also like thank
you so much for watching I'm Ricky YouTuber Da Vinci and we'll catch you guys next week