I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.
End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
51–60 of 448 posts
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#52The whole idea of a linear city is daft. A circle is way more efficient at getting around. The dimensions of the Line are, of course, silly as well.
Is that actually true from a transportation physics perspective? I can’t imagine that a curved tram/train/etc. would be able to accelerate and decelerate as efficiently as one on a straight path.
Yeah, but it wouldn't have as far to go, since the maximum distance between any two stations is half as far on a ring city of circumference d as on a linear city of length d, and you can get even shorter if you cut across the ring.
To get the same area, you'd have to have slightly more center-line circumference on a ring city as linear distance on a line, but even so your transit distances are going to be shorter on the ring.
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#53The only thing the Gulf states have going for them is oil money and a good hub location on the Europe–Southeast Asia airline routes. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar, they all remind me of that quote from King of the Hill—they are monuments to man's arrogance. Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere; vapid luxury in the form of expensive garish cars, shop…
> all while in the back alley local chiefs who oppose stupid and unrealistic white elephant vanity projects are executed
Can you give any keywords what to look for to read more about this?
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#54The only thing the Gulf states have going for them is oil money and a good hub location on the Europe–Southeast Asia airline routes. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar, they all remind me of that quote from King of the Hill—they are monuments to man's arrogance. Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere; vapid luxury in the form of expensive garish cars, shop…
> Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere Couldn't that element be self-sufficient on solar?
My first thought was that it would be like a perpetuum mobile, but since heat pumps have like 400 % efficiency, it should, yes.
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#55The only thing the Gulf states have going for them is oil money and a good hub location on the Europe–Southeast Asia airline routes. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar, they all remind me of that quote from King of the Hill—they are monuments to man's arrogance. Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere; vapid luxury in the form of expensive garish cars, shop…
> all while in the back alley local chiefs who oppose stupid and unrealistic white elephant vanity projects are executed Can you give any keywords what to look for to read more about this?
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#56The whole idea of a linear city is daft. A circle is way more efficient at getting around. The dimensions of the Line are, of course, silly as well.
Yeah, I'm really struggling to understand why a linear city is appealing. I suppose if you set a hard limit of one train line in your city, then building it along that train line might make sense.
You'd spend a lot of time on that one train line though - and I imagine in the central bits it would get really really busy as people are trying to get to the other end. And what happens if that train line breaks?
Making a city circular takes advantage of geometry - even at the cost of having to build more than one train line. It also opens up the possibility of other forms of travel - buses, bikes, cars.
It doesn't surprise me that this is starting to fall apart. When it was announced it seemed completely unhinged.
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#57The only thing the Gulf states have going for them is oil money and a good hub location on the Europe–Southeast Asia airline routes. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar, they all remind me of that quote from King of the Hill—they are monuments to man's arrogance. Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere; vapid luxury in the form of expensive garish cars, shop…
Abu Dhabi does not belong in the list with the other ones. It has been extremely well run since Zayed bin Sultan and will probably transition quite well to a post oil future.
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#58The only thing the Gulf states have going for them is oil money and a good hub location on the Europe–Southeast Asia airline routes. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar, they all remind me of that quote from King of the Hill—they are monuments to man's arrogance. Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere; vapid luxury in the form of expensive garish cars, shop…
Abu Dhabi does not belong in the list with the other ones. It has been extremely well run since Zayed bin Sultan and will probably transition quite well to a post oil future.
> Abu Dhabi does not belong in the list with the other ones. It has been extremely well run since Zayed bin Sultan
It's also governed differently from the others in being an oligarchy. That requirement for consensus-building and internal variation creates robustness; it gave Dubai the room to experiment, for example, with religious moderation.
It's not a view I hold too seriously. But I remember visiting the Emirates and Saudi Arabia--shortly after the Phillipines and India--and thinking to myself that the British were, in their time, far better at nation building than we've (EDIT: America) been in the post-War era.
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#59The only thing the Gulf states have going for them is oil money and a good hub location on the Europe–Southeast Asia airline routes. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Qatar, they all remind me of that quote from King of the Hill—they are monuments to man's arrogance. Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere; vapid luxury in the form of expensive garish cars, shop…
> Desert cities hitting 50+ °C air temperature at midday which means air conditioning everywhere Couldn't that element be self-sufficient on solar?
Solar in desert has a lot of issues including wind and sand coverage. Although the deserts of the region may seem like unchanging environments, the ecosystem and weather is hostile to solar installations (amongst other things). Moreover, solar panels become less efficient at higher sustained temperatures, which increases land and infrastructure maintenance costs.
https://eepower.com/industry-articles/is-desert-based-solar-...
Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity
#60The whole idea of a linear city is daft. A circle is way more efficient at getting around. The dimensions of the Line are, of course, silly as well.
Is that actually true from a transportation physics perspective? I can’t imagine that a curved tram/train/etc. would be able to accelerate and decelerate as efficiently as one on a straight path.
Acceleration and deceleration aren't relevant here, the limit would be passenger comfort either way.
Curved tracks do mean limits on top speed, as the centrifugal force needs to be kept below what would be uncomfortable for passengers. It also can cause some issues for building stations, as curved stations require a wider gap between the train and the platform. But neither is a blocking issue, all train tracks in the world do have curve, and curved stations aren't unusual in public transport systems.
The grandparent probably means disk, not ring-shaped when mentioning circles anyway. Pick any 2 point at random into a 33km² circle, the average distance will be 4km, and worst case scenario 6km. Do the same thing in a 33km², 200m-wide "line", the average distance will be 85km, with a worst case of 170km. A circular city doesn't need nearly as much raw speed for it's public transport to be more efficient than transport in a nonsensical linear city could ever be, even if you throw in ridiculously fast trains and sprinkle magical AI thinking.
It's not a coincidence that all major cities are roughly circular even though they are built around roughly linear features (navigable rivers and/or coast line). It's just what naturally works.