Saudi Arabia’s Line: A Nightmarish, Comic Book Vision of Sustainability

Since Saudi Arabia’s January 2021 announcement and more recently intensified publicity of its plans to build a smart city called The Line, the internet has been abuzz with some delight and a hefty bit of skepticism. The linear city, capable of accommodating 9 million inhabitants, will be condensed in a vertical structure, stretching 100 miles in length and only 650 feet across; it will maintain perfect year-round climate, offer high-speed rail in place of carbon-emitting cars, boast a mirrored exterior, and allow residents near-immediate access to all their work and play needs. Many have scoffed at the futuristic, sci-fi nature of the project’s reliance on zero-gravity urbanism, a design concept that layers city functions vertically for maximum spatial efficiency. Others have analyzed its purportedly environmentally sound structure and dubbed it an “ecological disaster,” noting that the construction will, itself, be carbon-emissions heavy and wildly disruptive to local ecosystems, not to mention that the mirrored, 100-mile-long exterior will be a collision hazard for birds and an interference in animal migration. Others have questioned how and why a city valuing social integration and sustainability would sit at the center of an Islamist, authoritarian country flowing with crude oil.As for me, after a furious bit of web searching confirmed that the promotional videos weren’t trailers for an upcoming Marvel or DC fantasy feature, I felt … well, depressed.I understand that this city, if it were to be built (and that’s a big “if”), would boast a level of efficiency that represents a more sustainable future for life on our planet. But that’s the thing — I’m interested in life on our planet, not life insulated from it. A view of the planned Saudi Arabian ‘smart city,’ The Line. Via neom.comThe Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has expressed all sorts of outlandish plans for the city’s offerings, including a fake moon to brighten the tiered monstrosity at night. Imagine a world in which Wallace Stevens’s moon, his “mother of pathos and pity,” would not only be replaced by her tech-improved shell of a duplicate, but one in which she never changed appearance or her evocation of feeling with the seasons. Because — to be clear — there would be no such thing as seasons.Aren’t humans meant to explore and be exposed to the elements? Isn’t that how we grow and become? If the subject of Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” didn’t wander amid the world’s mercurial wilds, he wouldn’t have been “fearful when the sky was full of thunder and tearful at the falling of a star.” He wouldn’t have traveled the full length of his capacity for feeling, or, in other words, have been as fully human. The conceptualization of Saudi Arabia’s Line has made me realize that our full maturation as a species — in body and spirit — is necessarily bound up in our being terrestrial.The other essential pertaining to our humanity is the element of choice. We get to choose what calls to us and discover what resonates, and, in so doing, find ourselves. Some people actually welcome the cold and choose the woods of North Dakota. Some lie like lizards in the blazing Key West sun. Some people — and I’m among them — can’t stomach life in skyscrapers. The closer to the ground I am, the more grounded in my own body I feel. Some of us don’t want to imagine a life uncharacterized by perpetual pursuit of oceanside repose or engagement with places and things that aren’t prefab. Ironically, it would be in a city in which everything is easily and simply laid out before me — where everything is marked and accessible — that I would feel most lost. We are, all of us, the sum of our choices. So who are we in a place in which life is planned on our behalf? With every luxury and need at my fingertips, I would feel unchallenged and unmotivated. And, even if the greenery and simulated moonlight were sufficiently realistic, the knowledge of my enclosure would make me feel trapped and unsafe. All my life, my mother has kept her father’s now-vintage stapler on her desk. A reminder of his inclination to conserve, the stapler projects one of the core values of my mother’s upbringing: Things that can be repaired shouldn’t be replaced. If our habits on this planet forecast some sort of untenable future, shouldn’t we alter our methods rather than devise a new container for existence? Shouldn’t we apply our time, skills, and finances toward the preservation of our planet’s beauty rather than the fabrication of some pale, if flashy, understudy?Another thing: With acrophobia affecting 5 percent of the world’s population, we might want to consider sustainable solutions that don’t depend on some sort of vertiginous matrix. Just a thought.

Saudi Arabia’s Line: A Nightmarish, Comic Book Vision of Sustainability

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