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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

#151

Post by asah »

lrem wrote: post #121
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…

I work in the G and it doesn't seem to be like that. First point, the average tenure in my team is somewhere between 6 and 8 years.

Many of my friends are still there, 15 years later!

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

#152

Post by baybal2 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #138
baybal2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was also a very telling interview with architects, builders, concept people etc... and after talking about Neom in all enthusiasm for a bit the interviewer asked each a simple question: would you live in Neom? Another question, WHO will live in Neom? Saudi Arabia only have 19-20 million native citizens, the rest are all expats.

> Another question, WHO will live in Neom? Saudi Arabia only have 19-20 million native citizens, the rest are all expats. People from extremely poorly managed countries or countries unable to attract investment because of lack of law or other factors. The UAE is 90% or so migrants who will never become citizens. If you have quasi-competent government and are willing to allow migrant workers in you can print money. Pa…

No post body was provided.

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

#153

Post by N19PEDL2 »

apexalpha wrote: post #94

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…

> [...] and after talking about Neom in all enthusiasm for a bit the interviewer asked each a simple question: would you live in Neom?

I wonder what the architect of this building [0] would have answered the same question. However, many people live there.

[0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/0c/1f/070c1f5ab8a54d907cca...

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

#155

Post by scythe »

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…

>5-minute walkable neighborhoods. The proximity to services of cities combined with the roominess of suburbs. At least in theory it's the perfect place to live.

The problem with 175 km of continuous "subway" is that you probably don't want to walk more than 2.5 km to the train (if that, it's Arabian hot) so you have 35 stops (5 km apart) along the line at a minimum — with a blistering acceleration of g = 10 m/s^2 you're stuck at an average velocity of 18 km/h, so it's eleven hours of travel end-to-end assuming two minutes at each stop. Those are optimistic assumptions. You can mitigate it slightly by having express trains skip stops, but now it gets complicated, etc. To be anywhere near reasonable you probably want about five actual transit lines on the single "line".

A much less crazy plan would have 8-16 compact neighborhoods at various spacings along the line, where you can get the most out of the directional freedom of walking, and the train can go much faster without having so many stops.

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

#156

Post by Balero »

lizardactivist wrote: post #148

I would love to see someting like this happen. It's a shame there seems to be so many petty, envious people hoping it fails.

I'm not hoping it fails. But I will take some joy in the inevitable implosion of an obvious white elephant project obviously made for political (corruption) reasons.

This project is not based in reality, or has any consideration for reality. It is obviously inefficient in it's basic geometry (circle beats line) let alone after looking at the actual numbers. A 200m tall 170km long wall is not going to work. They claim you will be able to travel end to end in 20mins. Thats 510kph without acceleration or deceleration. That's 50kmph faster than the current fastest train (Shanghai Maglev) all whilst being within 200m of 9 million people.

And all of this will be zero carbon of course, with a passively controlled temperate climate in the desert. Nice of them to throw some trees in the graphics to show that.

This is made to pay consultants and businesses, and keep the man in charge happy. I'm not hoping it fails. If they reach all of these milestones and it even turns out to be vaguely ok, I will literally eat my hat, hold my hand up and say I was wrong. But when it doesn't I will take some joy in the mess of a story that comes out.

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

#158

Post by jjeaff »

bambax wrote: post #144
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.

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.)

Ya, I think ideas coming from someone who calls himself "his royal highness" deserve some extra scrutiny.

It's so strange seeing these futuristic dystopian ideas coming from a ruling monarch that was born into the position. It's like they are preserving the worst of humanity's past and preparing to carry it directly into a dystopian future.

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

#159

Post by panick21_ »

As usual in Saudi Arabia, more big PR about some magical technology city. Of course the other cities they have started with many of the same promises are now-where near complete.

Its an utterly absurd and incredibly dumb and expensive design. We literally know how to get the best cities already. This is just a way to hook people who have never thought about city design at all.

I guess you can't make nice marketing videos with the message 'we will design new city with traditional grid pattern and a mix of town-houses and apparent building designed with streets that are primary for walking/bicycle use while providing some transportation infrastructure'.

Even on a purely theoretical level, if you strip away all the practical issues, I still don't get how this city would be superior in anything.

P.S: MBS is literally an incompetent fool. His military and diplomatic policy when he came to office made him seem like a 5 year old who got on the computer to finish his fathers Starcraft game.

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

#160

Post by panick21_ »

N19PEDL2 wrote: post #153
apexalpha wrote: post #94

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…

> [...] and after talking about Neom in all enthusiasm for a bit the interviewer asked each a simple question: would you live in Neom? I wonder what the architect of this building [0] would have answered the same question. However, many people live there. [0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/0c/1f/070c1f5ab8a54d907cca...

Those are different things. The promise of Neom is to be this amazing tech city that will attract people to live there.

The building you posted is most likely a public housing or some kind of government trying to build housing for the poor.

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