There does not seem to be anything "exclusive" about these images. They look like regular worldview 3 images that anybody can buy.
From TFA:
> The strange gap in imagery raises questions about who gets to access high-res satellite technology. And if the largest urban construction site on the planet doesn’t appear on Google Maps, what else can’t we see?
This is ridiculous. Commercial satellite images are sold everyday to thousands of buyers. You only need a credit card. Google maps is just not updated immediately with all these images that people buy.
I'm surprised at the low quality of these MIT "reporters".
Lately I see this dosconnect from "reality" (for lack of a better word, in your example how satelite images are bought and how Google maps works) and people writing about it without a clue or interest to actually investigate (using outdated Google maps data to formulate a conspiracy theory). And it is not just journalism, it is everywhere, I see it at work (between seasoned people and those fesh from university or those that drank too much founder kool aid), in politics, you name it. I find that tebdency rather troubeling.
I think it is also one of the reasons why a majority of people have no idea how the infrastucture of world works, from electricity over supply chains to the internet and basically everything in between.
Apple maps still show a construction site near where I live where there has been houses for several years. WhAt ARe thE CIA HiDIng in thIS SwEDIsh suBURb?!
So many of these articles, and none address the realities of Saudi/Gulf family power structures. For the king/MBS to remain in power they need to keep the powerful families on side. That means giving them money, enough money that they don't get too jealous of the king's money and decide they should be king. But handing them money without directing how they spend it will lead to ruin. They will set themselves up as new powers, to the point that they will one day be buying weapons and influence to overthrow you. You have to keep them busy doing other things than plotting your doom. You give them jobs. Rich Saudi families own and run the construction firms building these silly projects. The up-and-coming sons of these families are called "investors" and "developers" of mega projects. They go to nice schools and spend their working lives consulting with architects and engineers. They hire famous westerners (Beckham) to promote their pet projects (soccer/golf tournaments). That is way way better than them consulting with militants, extremists and mercenaries. It is better than them running around the world building their own power bases. Call these projects wasteful and inefficient all you want. They are doing exactly what they are designed to do: keep the king from being overthrown. They are the Saudi version of Louise XIV's Versailles.
The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'Ud. Robert Lacey - 1982
Also any and all European history dealing with Kings and royal houses. They are all basically the same: Property, religion, upstart sons and a king trying to stay king.
Power dynamics never really change, do they? The currency in which power is measured, and the eules by which they play are all that changes. And the more things change, the more they stay the same.
They dug a trench in the sand, which is not such a tall order given the consistency of sand.
It's also the reason why they can stick a straw in the sand and oil comes out.
The only big trademark Core infrastructure project made in Saudi up to now has been the Abraj-Al-Bait [0], spearheaded by the Bin Laden Group [1] (founded in 1931 by Osama Bin Laden's father) which is something comparable to the recent CityCenter Las Vegas Development.
And that trench is maybe 5-7 kilometers long (it's supposed to be 170).
I never doubted they'll build something, but until they reach that something the original presentation will get dumbed down a few times. It's still gonna be a long (but definitely not 170 kilometers) line with a metro and no cars, but that's about it.
To add to the possible justifications for this project, the YouTube channel Economics Explained made a nice video on how these insane megaprojects can make sense. Essentially, they are meant to be long and expensive just to attract enough foreign companies to establish permanent presence in the country. Once that happens, the idea is that they eventually start to contribute to the SA economy independently, helping them move on from oil only economy.
It makes sense if you consider that when you have oil, it will make your currency strong, so exporting goods is expensive and that makes developing other industry difficult. Also, investments, people and other resources in your country will be all mainly directed towards oil, since that's where the profits are largest. So to escape this trap, you have to basically do something rather crazy.
I'm well aware of the explanations that this project is infeasible and not based on logic. But it still seems to me that digging foundations across the entire footprint is spreading development resources more thinly than a standard development would?
Can someone better-versed in the economics of large development projects explain to me why this isn't being pursued in a more risk-reducing fashion, with a smaller section being built top-to-bottom to demonstrate its viability?
I have no idea on what the project details are, but - generally speaking and if possible - building an open-cut tunnel (as opposed to bored) is much cheaper (like 1/3 of the cost) and much faster (also because the works are not sequential and can thus be carried on easily in multiple stretches at the same time, given enough equipment and workers ).
The issue is the scale, which requires a construction effort probably spanning decades.
So if they really do start building it they'll likely start from one end and build it section by section until either it's complete or they give up. Even 1km out of the 170 will result in a very large building.
They're not remotely digging foundations across the entire footprint yet. This thing is (in theory at least) supposed to be 170 km long. The linked article says that only half of that length even has any construction activity on it yet.
A fractal design would be equally interesting (possibly more interesting) and much more efficient. I should think nature usually designs for efficiency. Leaf, fern, ant hill, watersheds might provide ideas.
> in a more risk-reducing fashion, with a smaller section being built top-to-bottom to demonstrate its viability?
My guess would be the time. If this would be built in 3-5 years, then with a demonstrator it would take 5 to 10 years to complete. Also - not enough (heh) money constraints.
Can private earth observing satellites change orbits for full mission retasking? I would have assumed they only have enough fuel for maintaining orbit and station keeping and their coverage areas are pretty much static from the point they are inserted into their operational orbit.
Maxar says it covers "60% of Earth’s surface monthly" [1]. But it's one thing to fly over a place, another to allocate bandwidth, compute and analysts to beam down, process and analyze images of it.
For the work and resources[1] of these mental projects, humanity could solve world hunger, probably several times over. Or build enough nuclear energy to power half of Europe. (Edit: These are examples of what this much time, resourcing and manpower can do, merely examples)
Oh well, I guess at least some of those hundreds of billions will end up winkled out of the Saudis by consultancies, at least. Presumably it can then trickle back up and be lent out for something more useful.
I'm more surprised the Saudis haven't already slapped down a few trillion dollars worth of solar on empty desert and future-proofed their energy exports. After all, just because they sell solar energy wouldn't mean they've have to stop the oil overnight[2]. Electricity supply isn't going to be sufficient any time soon and demand isn't going anywhere but up[3].
[1]: it's easy to say "the money" but actually the money can be recycled once it's spent by the KSA royals, so it's kind of immaterial. It's the opportunity costs and resource use.
[2]: energy aside, polymers and petrochemicals aren't going anywhere, even if a few supermarkets have changed to paper tomato trays
[3]: moving all of the world to electrical heating, even fully leveraging ground- and air-source, and traction is going to require mind-bending amounts of installed capacity.
Humanity does not need any extra money to solve hunger. We have enough food. Food prices, despite recent inflation issues, are being made more cheaply than ever in human history, in quantities more than sufficient to feed us all.
We just choose that some people go hungry, for being too poor.
It's more an example of what such resources (I specifically avoided focusing on the money) could achieve, rather then air-conditioning a few cubic kilometres of desert.
But compared to a hundred billion dollar motorway perhaps it's actually a better investment. Maybe they genuinely will hit on how humanity can live in zero carbon harmony with the world. It would be pretty ironic that the Saudis crack that one first and finish what Paolo Soleri started.
Isn’t world hunger solved in the sense that it’s no longer monetary? Are there people starving due to lack of funds?
That being said, these aren’t exclusive tasks. It’s not like Saudi Arabia chose between feeding people and a multi-year 170km infrastructure project. It seems odd to compare building a city in one country with feeding people all over the world.
Technically they did. They're not the first to many that choice, but they made it.
They could have set up a global food infrastructure fund and used it develop sustainable and accessible food technology to produce the food and get the calories to everyone.
They didn't, and neither did anyone else, on the scale required (a few beleaguered charities, aid agencies and the UN notwithstanding)
Ditto for the other example I gave, and any others you can think of.
This is a frankly disingenuous way to put it. Saudi isn’t to blame for world hunger, which isn’t caused by money anyways. The primary concern of the Saudi ruling family is themselves and their citizens and last time I checked, they weren’t facing food insecurity.
Countries facing widespread hunger do so due a mix of factors, including war, corruption, lack of policies promoting agriculture, etc…throwing money alone at the problem won’t solve it and at some point, these countries should be held responsible to fix their problems.
Yes, poor maligned Saudi Arabia, they've never hurt anyone and haven't maintained a death grip on the world's energy for decades by undermining alternating energy at every turn (even while embracing it for domestic use). I mean, this [1] is from this year, and that after their own pivot into domestic renewables.
Just from the damage they've caused by inhibiting renewables, they're up there as some of the biggest contributors to global issues now and in the future. It's not only on them, many others are more then complicit, but they know what they've been doing.
SA (or whoever) can set up such a fund, but do they have the influence to make sure the fund does what it needs to do in other countries to actually get the work done?
And then there's places where hunger is more of a factor of war or governnent corruption or ineptitude. It's hard to fix that without causing other problems.
Everyone's focusing on what was the first example if what that much "will to get shit done" could do. There's lots you could do with that much.
Hell, they could have done what I would have done if I were an country and slapped a cool trillion on modular, exportable, nuclear reactor technology and become the world's supplier of those (though actually maybe we've waited too long and bulk solar is a better bet these days, which they're in on domestically, but not apparently as a mass export).
I don't think they'll get much useful return on these gigatonnes of steel, glass and concrete in the desert and that's more then a little sad to me. But maybe I'm wrong and it'll become a mega-Shenzhen and outshine the world.
Again, that's an idea that requires buy in from the outside. You could do all that, but not if the IAEA decides not to like you, and if you can't find buyers for the reactors when they're ready in 10? years what's the point. May as well build a locally focused boondongle.
If the tolerances are good, maybe the central rail makes for a decent linear accelerator site if the rest of the building is vacant.
Well, again drilling into a specific off-the-cuff example, but even if Saudi of all countries can't muscle in there, install a shitload yourself on the peninsula and become a net fresh water exporter with massive desalination plants. Probably you don't even need nuclear at this point and go straight for solar.
In 10 years, or 20, or 30, there's going to insane water demand on all sides: the entire middle East and most of Africa is going to be at each others throats for water and will pay whatever you ask. Pretty much how it works now for oil, actually.
With that in mind, maybe it's indeed the best possible outcome that that KSA splash the cash harmlessly and uselessly rather then build a new chokehold on something.
World hunger is a logistical problem in a high corruption system. It’s easy to find enough calories for everyone, it’s hard to get them there if only 10% goes where intended
But why do you think your ideas are any better or more worthy or ethical than theirs? This project addresses many important issues, it’s far from a vanity project.
I think the problem here is not that any one idea would have been better than this. The scale is just out there. It’s too much.
Especially on HN, it seems like it just begs the question, what would the MVP look like?
Say it is a cross shape instead with one interchange/ hub in the middle. Now everywhere is like half as far away as before. Continue adding spokes. Now we're back to a filled circle with a central core more like traditional cities and I bet buildings would end up much taller in the core.
I get that. Alone and maximizes the distance between any two random points. A circle minimizes the distance between any two random points.
However, it gets more interesting if you're not flying like a bird between the two points. If you are taking metro rail, you care about your distance to a stop which you will walk plus the travel time that you will ride, and number of transfers. As you see, it becomes a lot more complicated. You would have to put down a lot more rail so that every person in a circle is within 200 M of a rail line.
A line 170km by 200m wide has an area of 34km^2. This equals a circle with a diameter of 6.6km.
it would take 694km of rail to fill that circle with a grid so that no point is further than 100m from the lines.
The same holds true for your power, water and sewage infrastructure.
I use a very linear mall style layout. But the difference in my design is each module juts out orthogonal to the main bus and tiles linearly. So as the bus grows, each "spine" grows outward to increase capacity. But it can't continue indefinitely - eventually the module-bus bandwith bottleneck dominates, and I have to start a totally separate bus in parallel.
Neom will run into the same problem, except without the ability to first scale laterally. There's a reason logistical systems aren't a straight fuckin line. Cities are logistics machines.
I think the average Factorio noob has put more thought into layout design than the architects of Neom.
I can think off many ideas off the top of my head which would be striking, revolutionary, and less dumb than a line when it comes to logistics. Hell, even a circle (of limited width) would be better, as your worst case transit time immediately is cut in half.
Aside from being cool, I think the idea is to be zero carbon so they need someway to have solar panels that sustain a certain population without having huge solar farms hanging off sections.
The long and narrow is a different aesthetic. A dweller will likely dwell in a dwelling with a view of the desert or sea unbroken to the horizon. When you come home you will look out upon a large natural world with a stunning unobstructed sunrise or sunset (choose your side wisely) every day.
You are "in a city", but you are "living on Earth", both are present, separated by your front door..
Culturally, most of the residents will be observing sunrise and sunset prayers which makes the transitions of the sun a little more anchoring. Traditionally morning prayer is twilight until sunrise, the evening is sunset until the red leaves the sky in the west. (So says Wikipedia anyway, then it gets into astronomical math, so I expect everyone just has an app for it now.)
This will end exactly the same way as the Jeddah tower. I'll eat my shoe if they come anywhere close to "completion" on this project. It's such a profoundly stupid way to spend half a trillion dollars.
This is a good project. The way we currently run our living spaces is extremely inefficient. We distribute people to many disparate neighborhoods, and - in the case of the US - gasp suburbs, and then face the problems which having to provide all the infrastructure, supply networks, transportation to those places create. One unmistakable example of this is traffic congestion and how a lot of energy, productivity and even more importantly, the precious time of people are lost while going from place to place, leave aside in congestions. The people are having to do this because it is just how things are, not because it is the best thing that mankind should have been doing.
The systems logic that they have in this project makes sense: A more efficient structure would definitely make running a large urban region much more effective. And Saudi Arabia has a lot of flat, uninterrupted, unused space that is largely outside the earthquake, storm and other disaster zones, so a big linear structure can be easily workable there.
The line structure seems to be well calculated - its long, but its very thin. Meaning that they plan to run everything one single, uninterrupted, well, line of infra. Which totally makes sense from an engineering standpoint. If it was a vanity project or wasteful indulgence as some claim, the systems side of this would not be made as simple as this and it would be something more grand. Moreover, the linear building concept that apparently does not seem to inspire anyone judging from the comments, is another evidence that it was chosen for its systems efficiency, and not awe factor or tourism value.
Again, its an interesting project. Even if they can pull off a fraction of it and succeed in developing a large, uninterrupted urbanization that is efficient, it can make a great breakthrough in terms of urban technology.
> No, it makes zero sense to build a city along a line.
Why.
That we are building cities in non-linear fashion because we dont have enough flat, contiguous land in most of the world does not make it the best paradigm.
Moreover, there were historic communities that were built in such linear fashion. Ancient Egypt itself, was a gigantic line around the Nile river where the Nile played the role of the infrastructure.
> because we dont have enough flat, contiguous land in most of the world
But even in the plentiful places where we do, cities grow in two dimensions.
> Ancient Egypt itself, was a gigantic line around the Nile river where the Nile played the role of the infrastructure.
This is indeed a good example, though it proves the opposite of your point. The Egyptians spread in a linear fashion because (and only because) the land far away from the Nile was pretty much uninhabitable (except with a nomadic lifestyle).
> But even in the plentiful places where we do, cities grow in two dimensions.
We don't have plentiful places to be able to construct any linear cities. The majority of the world's habitable zones do not permit such construction. You would eventually have to oblige with what geography and geology imposes on you even after a few kilometers.
Saudi Arabia has immense desert stretches that are uniform and that are fit for this purpose. What would prohibit it would be the desert environment not being conducive to living. But an efficient planning and infrastructure like they are likely doing would make it possible.
> This is indeed a good example, though it proves the opposite of your point.
No, you disproved your point:
> The Egyptians spread in a linear fashion because (and only because) the land far away from the Nile was pretty much uninhabitable (except with a nomadic lifestyle).
That is precisely the reason why Egyptians lived in linear fashion, and thats also the reason why their entire civilization never had infrastructure problems and it was able to undertake construction projects like the pyramids.The reason for having to urbanize in such a linear outline does not negate its merits.
Moreover - the majority of the world's civilizations and urbanization has developed along the rivers. That many rivers do not follow a straight line and turns in curvers does not mean that they are not line-like in their behavior. Even when the land far away from the rivers were arable and habitable, the urbanization did not spread too far away from the river. The infrastructure that the river provides is way too efficient to give up. Even if it is only for providing water for consumption and for irrigation.
Actually, it is so even today - the majority of world's urbanization and mega cities and even industries are still spread along the rivers.
Certain coastline cities are built as a narrow stripe along the coast, especially those either restrained by mountains or evolved as a resort. (not as narrow as 200m though)
A circle is literally a bent line. It could work as well. However, you would get a bent line in the end. Aside from the problems that running an infra on a circular shape with bent curves would bring, it could work. A line would be just easier.
That's for people. For infrastructure, that is physically so too. But interlinking different units in the different points in a circular structure introduces a lot of complexities if done. Much easier to construct standalone units that get supplied from a line.
Please look over there while I run a crazy theocracy and steal "my" people's oil wealth to squander on booze and fast cars while they live like it's the 1400s.
Well the pictures prove the whole "line" bullshit is nothing more than marketing if there is that much boring infrastructure already around it from the start.
Aren't we just falling for their plans for giving it that much media attention?
Pretty sure last bubble gum I bought was made in SA. I remember because it was a while ago and it was the sole reason I got them in the first place. Got curious. There is plenty of near eastern stuff around, if one looks, but that one felt rare enough to me. I am not even a collector of any kind.
This is the problem with unfathomably rich authoritarian rulers with unchecked power. They don't have people pushing back on their grandiose and insane ideas.
A great example of this is Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat.
It's not just that no-one pushes back, but the opposite: many actively encourage it (especially the consultants and the US/EU firms who ultimately mostly benefit from it).
I'd almost like to have my nose in that trough (and God knows when I was looking for a job, YouTube was spamming me with Oxagon adverts enough to know there exist such jobs), but then I imagine the type of person that would gravitate to manage such a project that I'd be down-line of and think "maybe not".
From TFA:
> The strange gap in imagery raises questions about who gets to access high-res satellite technology. And if the largest urban construction site on the planet doesn’t appear on Google Maps, what else can’t we see?
This is ridiculous. Commercial satellite images are sold everyday to thousands of buyers. You only need a credit card. Google maps is just not updated immediately with all these images that people buy.
I'm surprised at the low quality of these MIT "reporters".