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End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

theguardian.com

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Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#361

Post by apexalpha »

dangerwill wrote: post #350
apexalpha wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Adam Something also has a video essay where he trashes battery electric busses as the most ridiculously bad idea ever. At the time of publishing thousands and thousands were already on the road for years in the Netherlands. This guy checks what his audience already thinks on a subject and then makes up arguments to go along with it. Take it with a kilo of salt.

I totally agree in broad strokes about Adam Something. He's an unserious urbanist meme YouTuber essentially. However, battery electric buses are seriously more expensive and a bigger carbon sink than a trolley bus network. But governments don't like to build infrastructure in the west and some people don't like the look of overhead wires. This isn't economically or environmentally efficient but those preferences can…

In the Netherlands all big cities have tram networks. So we do build infrastructure all the time, including overhead wires.

We even have a city that built a trolley bus network. But it never caught on simply because it has too many drawbacks. It's worse than a BEV bus and worse than a tram but does come with the upfront investment bill.

BEV buses that replace diesel ones are working great.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#362

Post by oliviabenson »

0dayz wrote: post #258
oliviabenson wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are complicit (if not responsible). Accepted practice isn’t an excuse for indifference but criticising your own country isn’t a free pass to criticise the culture of others without challenging our culpability. If we sincerely want to help the citizens of these countries that we believe to be oppressed, we have options that we choose not to take. We could offer cultural asylum, give people a route to access our cul…

Sorry but this reeks of someone who hasn't actually mingled with other cultures and instead have taken academic philosophy as a substitute to make up for it. Because you whenever it was intentional or not make yourself sound very racist by effectively saying "x person from y society actually like the barbarism said society has". Comparisons of others in this case societies is crucial to make your own society better,…

The point I’m making is that what’s barbaric to you and I is not barbaric in another society and vice-versa. The American culture of kicking your children out of home the day they turn 18 is more barbaric to some than the death penalty, as is a child choosing not to contribute to their family.

Many citizens of Singapore are very happy as citizens of Singapore, many of them look at the west as barbaric: the crime ridden cities of the U.S, the poverty, the abject failure of western governments to protect their citizens despite very high tax rates… if killing a few criminals is the price to pay to live in a comparable utopia, so be it? What’s barbaric about a caning? The U.S. sentences people to death!

I am from the west (despite your assertion, I live in a Muslim country) and believe in very western ideals, I believe in freedom for the individual, it’s deeply ingrained in me, however, my non-academic experience has shown me that this is not a universal truth. Many cultures do not care for the individual, they care for the family, a group of people bound by blood to be one part of the whole. Many cultures believe that sacrificing oneself for the family is noble and right and that to be an individual is to be barbaric.

Once you accept that individual freedom is a western ideal, and not fundamental to the human condition, it becomes much easier to understand that other cultures are fundamentally different.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#363

Post by temp_1337 »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #144
zaphirplane wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you dislike gulf countries. The points raised are a mixture of facts, fiction, jealousy and dislike. You want them to boil in desert heat with some environmental appeal, while many countries pump the air full of pollution from factories or massive ICE cars I haven’t heard of back alley executions over there I don’t feel hate towards someone spending their money on 2 cars or a holiday house or whatever luxury…

I'm guessing people's distastefor gulf states can be explained largely by their ranking in the global slavery index [1] (three gulf states in the top ten) the global freedom index [2] (Saudi Arabia in bottom ten) and the global corruption index (gulf states are not as good at corruption as slavery or repression but they still give it a good shot). This seems more likely to me as an explanation than hating on people w…

Meanwhile, the US, Germany, and others are currently actively supporting a genocide. And it's not their first one.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#364

Post by ta1243 »

keiferski wrote: post #79
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acceleration etc wouldn't really matter if I live at one end of the line and my friend lives at the opposite end. It would be an annoyingly long journey that stops at every single other station in the entire city. In a regular city that grows outwards, you'd expect there to be circumferential routes as well as cross-city routes connecting various points, making the travel time more bearable.

It would matter if an express train could accelerate fast enough to make the end-to-end trip quicker than a cross-city trip in a typical city.

No.

With no top speed, accelerate for 85km at 1m/s then decelerate for the next 85km/s at 1m/s and that's about 13 minutes with a top speed of about 900mph. 1m/s is the top acceleration you can have for a typical passenger train for comfort purposes.

Total area of a 170km*200m city is 34 square km, or a city about 6.5km across.

London's Elizabeth line (crossrail) covers a distance of 6.75km from Paddington to Liverpool Street in 11 minutes, with 3 intermediate stops.

The circumference of a 6.5km diameter city would be 20km. 20 cross-city lines with decent headway and interchange would give a worst case journey of

- 250m to nearest station - 3 minutes walk

- 2 minute wait for train

- 5 minutes to central station

- 200m/3 minutes to appropiate platform

- 2 minute wait for train

- 5 minutes to destination station

- 200m/3 minutes to destination

25 minutes. From anywhere to anywhere.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#365

Post by keiferski »

krisoft wrote: post #355
keiferski wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had you taken more than a glance, you would have come across this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street And yes, as I wrote, it is the main axis of the city, even if other neighborhoods branch off of it. This is a basic obvious fact about the city: From the very beginning this street was the central axis, around which the city grew bigger, and its development spontaneously gave the present shape to its ce…

Found it. None of that claims that "the city Łódź in Poland is situated along a single linear 4-5km street". It is not. So much so that if you look at it on a map, you can't see which one of the many streets is the one which is supposed to be the one you are talking about. I really recommend looking at a map if you want to make claims about how a city is. What the sentence you are quoting claims is that this is the s…

I’ve been to Lodz myself probably a dozen times. The city is oriented around the main long street. The street itself is probably the main tourist attraction, as well.

You can’t tell what it is on a map because you wouldn’t expect a pedestrianized street to be 100m wide. But I assure you, it is the busiest street and has the most foot traffic and commercial activity.

This argument is such a waste of time. I’ve been there, you’ve spent five minutes looking at Google maps. I brought it up as an example of a city designed around a straight line. Which it is.

Go waste someone else’s time.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#367

Post by JoeAltmaier »

flir wrote: post #321
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Yes you are. Of course, we are responsible most directly for our own interactions with other people. Less so with other people's bad behavior. You go down the other road, there's an indirect connection to every person on earth. Refuse to deal with everybody and anybody because of that, you're paralyzed. I get it, that was a rhetorical question. Mine is not a rhetorical answer. It's hard enough, dealing decently…

Ignorance is an excuse. But once I'm aware? It seems to me that's the point where I am complicit. Because I could just not eat prawns. "They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin" I think about that quote a lot. It sets an unachievable standard. But I don't think it's wrong.

'Just not eat prawns' is barely more than social action theatre. That's a point too. "I'm silently protesting something" is no protest at all. In fact, it is damaging the innocent for infinitesimal gain (the supply chain, the grocer, your own food variety).

You want to seize on a cause, go ahead. That would entail work, doing research, sending letters, something! That I could get behind; in fact, as I suggest, many of us are doing something every day. And maybe get a little weary of the warriors who respect gestures over substance.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#368

Post by jasongill »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #326
jasongill wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gravity? This is what water towers are for. (not to say that this project isn't a total farce, but at least the issue of pumping water without electricity was solved hundreds of years ago)

How would gravity help pumping water from deep in the Red Sea up into buildings?

the same way that water towers work - when the pumps are running (power is on), you pump water into the tower; then, when the pumps fail, gravity continues to provide water pressure as water drains from the tower. The water tower effectively acts as a "battery" in the system, storing energy (and water) and then releasing it as needed

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#370

Post by GeoAtreides »

jasongill wrote: post #368
GeoAtreides wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would gravity help pumping water from deep in the Red Sea up into buildings?

the same way that water towers work - when the pumps are running (power is on), you pump water into the tower; then, when the pumps fail, gravity continues to provide water pressure as water drains from the tower. The water tower effectively acts as a "battery" in the system, storing energy (and water) and then releasing it as needed

But then the water won't be cool...
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