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Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

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Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#102
post #98

Bloomberg has a good running series on this 'city of the future'. As you will expect consultants are making good money on this. I personally can't get enough of this foolish mega-project, I love the dry reporting on it. Here's one of the latest: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-mbs-neom-saudi-arabi... There was also a very telling interview with architects, builders, concept people etc... and after talking abo…

"As more of them arrived, foreign employees began describing their experiences with a joke: When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets. The first is to hold all the gold you’ll accumulate, and with so many living expenses taken care of, it will soon grow heavy. The second bucket is for all the shit you take. When that bucket is full, you pick up your bucket of gold and leave. It often doesn’t take long; many peopl…

The difference in media coverage and the reaction that follows when folks in the West (say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates) dream up ambitious future, and when folks in the East do so, is quite telling.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#103
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As more of them arrived, foreign employees began describing their experiences with a joke: When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets. The first is to hold all the gold you’ll accumulate, and with so many living expenses taken care of, it will soon grow heavy. The second bucket is for all the shit you take. When that bucket is full, you pick up your bucket of gold and leave. It often doesn’t take long; many peopl…

The difference in media coverage and the reaction that follows when folks in the West (say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates) dream up ambitious future, and when folks in the East do so, is quite telling.

You think nobody takes the piss out of them ? Bezos was the joke of the day he launched a dick rocket.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#105

What will this solve? What if a fire breaks out? Can protestors block a single street? Where are people going to dry clothes? Won't those who live at the base feel claustrophobic?

Most of these problems are probably already solved or could be solved. You are of course using dry cleaning services in some form. Fire suppression systems are built in. The structure is quite narrow, so you have a view to the outside from pretty much anywhere, and it's not much worse than any skyscraper, better probably because of (hopefully) better design. As to social aspects... That is my major concern also. Of c…

Makes sense. What about sports and entertainment - can it fit football fields or concert venues?

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#106

Reminds me of the movie Snowpiercer in reverse: desert instead of snow, static instead of moving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer

Which was an adaptation of a French comic from 1982 : Le Transperceneige.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#107
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Cities evolve organically, over decades and centuries. An up-front design like this will never come to be. Something may come from it, but it will be much more similar to a regular city than this.

> up-front design like this will never come to be Paris [1] and D.C.’s cores were engineered. Several cities after WWII were bombed to a blank slate. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_...

Canals of Amsterdam was the one of the first centrally planned city development in 17th century and it still stands (and it quite enjoyable to live in) today. They did run out of money in the middle of building it though so the eastern part of the plan didn't happen. Smart money is on something similar happening to this as well.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#108
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As more of them arrived, foreign employees began describing their experiences with a joke: When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets. The first is to hold all the gold you’ll accumulate, and with so many living expenses taken care of, it will soon grow heavy. The second bucket is for all the shit you take. When that bucket is full, you pick up your bucket of gold and leave. It often doesn’t take long; many peopl…

The difference in media coverage and the reaction that follows when folks in the West (say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates) dream up ambitious future, and when folks in the East do so, is quite telling.

Have you been living under a rock? The sheer amount of vitriol Elon gets rivals that Trump gets!
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