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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

#141

Post by dmitriid »

cynusx wrote: post #140
Dan42 wrote: post #125

I doubt it will get built, but they really have people who understand the fundamental concepts behind Arcology. Honestly I'm surprised at how many parts of the design are well thought-out and well adapted to the desert environment. Sunlight from the sides, but not so much that it overheats the city. Heat escapes up. 5-minute walkable neighborhoods. The proximity to services of cities combined with the roominess of su…

The dystopian side is the lack of squares to protest on ;) In all seriousness though, the project does look very realistic and I can't find any major flaw with it except that the glass wall will need to be a triple-mirror which is ridiculously expensive. The other unknown is how an idealized architecture like this stacks against real-life humans who don't care to maintain anything if they're not paid for it. I do hop…

> In all seriousness though, the project does look very realistic and I can't find any major flaw

Except, you know: all the infrastructure needed to build it in the desert. And maintained. And repaired

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

#142

Post by somenameforme »

inversefft wrote: post #9

City of the future built by a government stuck in the dark ages.

Building something like this in a democratic society is probably impossible. The reason is that there would be massive opposition to this and rhetorically powerful claims that the trillions of dollars this would cost in a Western society could be put to better use. Even if, by some Deus ex machina, one administration managed to get this project going, the next to come into power would likely can it.

Space is a perfect example. There's no technical reason we haven't established footholds on Mars and even the Moon, beyond the dilemma posed above. One administration would start a grand space program, the next would cancel it with partisan criticism, and start their own. And this has been going on for half a century.

Real progress back towards space only meaningfully restarted when private companies (or the owners thereof) started to become wealthy enough to fund their own space programs, without any regard for social criticism or worry about their leadership being canned next year if they don't get enough votes. Ironically this helped also somewhat kickstart governments back towards a focus on space as well.

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

#143

Post by sofixa »

cynusx wrote: post #140
Dan42 wrote: post #125

I doubt it will get built, but they really have people who understand the fundamental concepts behind Arcology. Honestly I'm surprised at how many parts of the design are well thought-out and well adapted to the desert environment. Sunlight from the sides, but not so much that it overheats the city. Heat escapes up. 5-minute walkable neighborhoods. The proximity to services of cities combined with the roominess of su…

The dystopian side is the lack of squares to protest on ;) In all seriousness though, the project does look very realistic and I can't find any major flaw with it except that the glass wall will need to be a triple-mirror which is ridiculously expensive. The other unknown is how an idealized architecture like this stacks against real-life humans who don't care to maintain anything if they're not paid for it. I do hop…

> The other unknown is how an idealized architecture like this stacks against real-life humans who don't care to maintain anything if they're not paid for it.

Well they'll probably pay for it. I don't know if the idea is to rent or sell housing there, but in both cases it's pretty standard to have provisions for ongoing maintenance.

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

#144

Post by bambax »

ignoramous wrote: post #102
pavlov wrote: 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.

Untrue. Most of Musk's "dreams" are ridiculed everywhere, and rightly so. Dystopia is dystopia, no matter where it comes from.

(Although, to make matters worse, MBS is a criminal and a despot.)

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

#145

Post by Pyramus »

teleforce wrote: post #132
bigDinosaur wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China and India likely had huge numbers dead due to the Bubonic Plague, but it's poorly recorded as far as I know. Definitely not 'mainly' a European pandemic, although it had such a great influence on European culture that we still talk about it today.

It's mainly a European pandemic. During the 14th century CE when the Black Death occurred, China and India were the two biggest and richest empires with the most literacy in the world. The probability that such significant event was not properly recorded is very low. Most of the Asian countries' history that we know today including Japan are known from the ancient and later Chinese writings [1]. [1]Japanese History D…

"This episode of bubonic plague spread to all inhabited continents, and ultimately led to more than 12 million deaths in India and China"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_plague_pandemic

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

#146

Post by lovehashbrowns »

Dan42 wrote: post #125

I doubt it will get built, but they really have people who understand the fundamental concepts behind Arcology. Honestly I'm surprised at how many parts of the design are well thought-out and well adapted to the desert environment. Sunlight from the sides, but not so much that it overheats the city. Heat escapes up. 5-minute walkable neighborhoods. The proximity to services of cities combined with the roominess of su…

I’m in love with the concept itself! I’d love to live in something like this. I love the walkability idea and the mirror design on the outside.

Sadly, this is not getting built as designed and double sadly is it’s being planned by a PoS running a PoS government.

Also I feel like cities aren’t meant to be designed this way. If nobody lives there, people aren’t gonna want to move there. If nobody is moving there, there won’t be anyone living there. Defeats the entire purpose.

It won’t ever be finished, of course, but I’d be curious as to what incentives they’d offer for moving there.

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

#147

Post by rbanffy »

concordDance wrote: post #108
ignoramous wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

We must measure the amount of unearned or undeserved vitriol. Trump’s is 110% deserved. Musk is at about 83%.

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

#149

Post by coffeeblack »

ignoramous wrote: post #102
pavlov wrote: 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.

What do you think it tells you?

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

#150

Post by scythe »

unsignedchar wrote: post #44

From the Atlantic profile of MBS earlier this year: “What struck me was that Neom’s vision is really an anti-vision. It is the opposite of the old Saudi Arabia. In the old Saudi Arabia, and even to an extent today, corruption and bureaucracy layered on each other to make an entrepreneur’s nightmare. Riyadh has almost no public transportation. No matter where you are, you cannot walk anywhere, except perhaps to your l…

That corner of SA is a little cooler due to latitude and the seabreeze. It's also designed to sit atop and support a desalinated water pipeline. So that part seems reasonable.
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