LINE IN THE SAND
First stunning satellite pics show futuristic £800bn megacity The Line – as true scale of desert metropolis is laid bare
A MEGACITY planned for the desert of Saudi Arabia is beginning to take shape, new satellite images show.
The scale of the £800bn metropolis that will house five million people in a 110 mile sideways skyscraper known as The Line is becoming apparent.
8
8
8
8
8
The Line will consist of two 1,600 feet tall buildings that run parallel to each other in the Saudi desert and will take 50 years to construct.
Work on the project - dubbed an Earth Scraper - began in October with drone footage showing the site already a hive of activity.
New images from Chang Guang Satellite Technology reveals the 200ft wide footprint of The Line being dug into the sand, shown in a yellow drawn on the photo.
They also reveal 425 diggers at work, represented by red dots, which have so far shifted 1.7 million cubic metres of rock, highlighted with purple.
Another picture shows a massive complex for the workers who will built the enormous project.
The fantasy city is expected to be based part on land and part in the Red Sea and is backed by Saudi's $500 billion Private Investment Fund.
The city will be located on the border with Jordan and Egypt and will start welcoming residents and businesses by 2030 but builders and urban planners say it could take some 50 years to finish.
It will be so long that engineers will need struts to take the Earth's curvature into account and and it will have its own high-speed rail line and marina.
Most read in The Sun
The gargantuan complex is expected to run from the Gulf of Aqaba in the country's west, through a mountain range and into a desert "aerotropolis".
The slick structure boasts an end-to-end travel time of about 20 minutes and is to be powered off renewable energy.
8
It will also have miles of greenery and homes and its own farms to feed the more than five million residents expected to fill it out.
Residents will need to have a subscription to access three meals a day.
The Line will be clad in mirrored glass and will be about the size of the US state Massachusetts and taller than the Empire State Building.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman revealed plans for the gigantic structure in January 2021 with the aim of creating the Kingdom's very own version the Pyramids of Egypt.
But planners are questioning the project's price tag and whether people would be drawn to living in a confined space after the pandemic.
Prince bin Salman is pushing ahead with the boondoggle idea he's branded a "civilizational revolution that puts humans first".
The Line is part of a wider scheme named NEOM which the Prince hopes will create thousands of new jobs and wean the country off its dependence on the oil and gas sector to fill state coffers.
The development of Neom has also resulted in local tribes being forcibly removed from the area, reports say.
"It's absolutely a disaster and I'm disappointed," said Alya Alhwaiti, a member of the Huwaitat tribe that is being displaced by the project.
Her cousin, Abdulrahim al- Huwaiti, was killed while battling attempts to demolish his home last year. She now lives in the UK and accused western firms that have joined the project of "not caring about human rights".
8
8
Topics