I don't think there is enough extractable riversand on planet earth for that amount of glass.
Glass is made from melted sand, so taking the raw materials from the desert is just fine.
Desert sand doesn't contain enough silica. It's mostly gypsum.
Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
221–230 of 264 posts
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#222It's interesting seeing the twitter comments:
[1]
> I never seen something more dystopian
>> Come on, you are in Los Angeles, just go to the corner if you want to see something more dystopian.
[2]
> What about human rights ?
>> I dunno ask your government.
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1. Their strategy seems to be "Deflect. Deflect. Deflect.". They never address criticism. They just focus on other problems.
2. If your response to a question about human rights is "I don't know", everyone should be scared.
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[1] https://twitter.com/adara_salim/status/1551750220643307525
[2] https://twitter.com/keeganc15/status/1551678707672178697
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#223I 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…
imagine train lines that stop at prime number stations. so line 2 would stop at station 2,4,6 like 3 would stop at 3,6,9. if you want to get to station 10 you could take line 11 directly to station 11 and then line 1 back. alternatively, you could use an app to calculate the best route based on when you arrived
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. In 1D, you can build a linear railway. Cost scales proportionally to length (and hence population) if you assu…
Remember, this is still a 2D project. The second dimension is up! Instead of XZ axes, it's XY. Your point about length is true, but about population scale might not, because it's still in 2D. There are still ways to segregate tracks.
Vertical poses a lot more problems than horizontal, though. As a general example, fire generally makes it unsafe to operate anything above or below.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think transport would be infinitely worse in a linear city. In a traditional street network, there are many ways to get from A to B and one link being unavailable is not the end of the world. Forcing everyone onto essentially the same street is guaranteed to cause both high fragility and high congestion, since everyone has to squeeze into the same line.
Most people in Hong Kong don't own a car, it's just not necessary due to the high density. This city is expected to to be ~15 times as dense as Hong Kong.
You don’t have to be in a car to experience street congestion. Hong Kong has plenty of areas with bus, metro or pedestrian congestion.
If everyone in Hong Kong was shoved into one train line, it would also be congested.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. In 1D, you can build a linear railway. Cost scales proportionally to length (and hence population) if you assu…
It's harder to build a grid of straight railways. You need more bridging or crossing at the very least. You are right about 2D being more efficient in terms of the length between two random points, but there could be scenarios where the simplicity still outweighs that benefit, especially given all the other factors in this project, like sunlight. The length is also much less of a concern than in traditional transport…
I’d assume this linear city would also involve a lot of bridging, since due to the width trains would basically almost be on top of each other.
Trains crossing perpendicular have to bridge maybe 6m at most. You’d have to bridge the entire length of city for this. And a fire would render any lines above or below unsafe to run until extinguished.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. In 1D, you can build a linear railway. Cost scales proportionally to length (and hence population) if you assu…
> In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. I doubt this would work. Cities don't do this for a reason. Transit lines get built according to transportat…
A lot of big city metro networks look like grids in the city center, or effectively function as such. Farther out the grid is plugged in by bus.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#228Bloomberg 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…
A friend of mine works on the NEOM project, and it really is like winning the lottery. Remote work with an occasional field trip to look at the place. But Google level salary to tell them how to save some data. The scale of the feeding trough is unimaginable. I saw an advert for NEOM on Piccadilly Circus, the whole entire e-wall, and the place isn't even built yet, so I'm not sure if they're using it to recruit. It's…
"It's like winning the lottery"
"Guy in charge is a bully"
I certainly don't want to defend the saudis, but let's face it, everyone views the Saudis as semi-gullible fools to be parted with their money, it wouldn't surprise me if they are a bit gruff.
Look, Saudi Arabia should be the ... Saudi Arabia of solar energy, they have a huge amount of capital from oil, and Saudi Arabia is at the juncture of 1) the richest continent 2) the largest continent, 3) the second-largest continent, they have ports with the Mediterranean and Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#229I 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 biggest issue is evolution. Cities are evolutionary to support change and shifts.
Unless the interior can be easily shifted in purpose and construction, but I kind of doubt it.
Then again, "overflow" settelements can function for evolution.
Soooooo many workers will die building even a part of this.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. I doubt this would work. Cities don't do this for a reason. Transit lines get built according to transportat…
A lot of big city metro networks look like grids in the city center, or effectively function as such. Farther out the grid is plugged in by bus.
Can you provide an example of a city with a grid-like metro? I know many grid like cities. I cannot think of any grid like metros.