utopias in the desert

The future is just over 200 kilometers away and it looks nothing like the COP27 venue,

: a desolate, belated replica of the American sprawl model, with five-lane highways and an amalgamation of communities walls, very private resorts and golf courses in the middle of the desert.

The future is called

, also on the shores of the Red Sea and in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia, where work has already begun on the overwhelming linear city that aspires to house nine million inhabitants

, in a strip of 200 meters wide and in two parallel buildings of 500 meters high, with mirror facades that aspire to merge with the arid environment.

Thursday is the day of "solutions" at COP27 and it is obligatory to talk about the present and future of cities, where 70% of the world's population will live in 2050.

The present is Sharm el Sheikh, which continues to be an enormous urban aberration despite the

.

The future aspires to be The Line, which has nevertheless created a great division among architects due to its disruptive and excessive vision.

The Line is

in 1882, with the idea of ​​"ruralizing the city and urbanizing the countryside" along an elongated axis of communication, as Hélène Chartier, director of urban planning of the C40 group of cities in the face of climate change.

Chartier recognizes the merits that the design of Soria had in its day, but she remembers how her project was to surround Madrid and was ultimately reduced to the street that bears her name.

Something similar, he predicts, could happen with The Line, which faces great technological, economic and environmental challenges, starting with the vast dimension of the project and its own design: "The future will only be sustainable if the population is concentrated in cities...

."

The Dutch architect Winy Maas, whose ultimate ambition would be to design a planet, has nonetheless put himself at the forefront of the defenders of the project, which boasts of compensating for the high human density

: "I I would love to live in that kind of environment."

Since the crown prince, the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, presented The Line in public, as part of the

program , criticism has not stopped raining against the

project that has put on the map what already it is known as Neom (the consortium and place name chosen for the province where it will be located, along with Jordan and Egypt).

magazine

has become in recent months the forum for debate on whether or not to be of The Line, designed by Morphosis, the study of Pritzker

.

Princeton professor Marshall Brown questions the scale chosen (the tall building would be taller than the Empire State Building, which stands at 1,500 feet) and warns that "the long array of factors at play" can greatly complicate its construction.

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For the American architect Adam Greenfield it is simply "a moral and ecological atrocity".

From Australia, Professor

of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) warns from the outset that CO2 emissions during its construction will be excessive and impossible to offset, despite its intention to become a

(without cars private and supplied 100% by renewable energy).

In any case, the bulldozers are already in action, tracing the strip that starts in the Gulf of Aqaba and that will advance

(creating serious conflicts with the Howeitat, a Judhami tribe that inhabits areas in the north of the peninsula and that has been displaced by the megaproject).

The deepest level will be that of transport, with

.

All the infrastructure will also go underground, including the transport of goods, waste management and desalinated water pipes.

The compressed surface between the two parallel buildings will be released for pedestrians and following the concept of "hyper-proximity", so that all basic services are within reach in five minutes.

Image of The Line project, which will be built along the Red Sea.

Tarek Qaddumi, Neom's executive director of planning, defends the concept of "zero gravity urbanism", with the alternation of housing, commercial premises and services at height, promoting social and cultural interaction beyond life on the surface.

And allowing the concentration in just

of the same population as in London, spread over 1,600 square kilometers.

Despite the appearance of a glass wall, the space between the two parallel buildings will not only reproduce outdoor space, but will also be

and dense vegetation on the heights.

All residents will have a guaranteed view of the sea or the desert, and accessibility to the natural environment.

"We see The Line as

to combine prosperity, livability and environmental conservation," says Qaddumi.

"Regardless of the scale, it will be a project that demonstrates to the world the human capacity, the technology and the commitment to revolutionize our current lifestyle."

Despite the initial delays, Qaddumi assures that in 2030 we will see a substantial part of the project already built, around one million inhabitants.

The Government of Saudi Arabia, with

, intends to turn the semi-desert province into an innovation 'hub' and endow it with a special economic regime to make it more attractive to the population.

The Line project.

Before Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates also had its particular utopia, something more modest and urban:

.

The project has dwindled over the years and currently just over 5% of the original design has been built, 17 kilometers from Abu Dhabi.

At COP27 we have been able to see the latest milestone, Masdar City Square, a 29,000-square-meter block that aspires to become an emblem of the Emirates' goal of zero emissions, which will host COP28 next year.

Just over a decade ago, Masdar City garnered media attention comparable to that unleashed in recent months by The Line.

for the design of a walled city facing the desert and with narrow streets to shade the surface and lower the temperature from 10 to 15 degrees, preferably pedestrian and with an original personal rapid transport (PRT) system. without driver.

"We finally gave up on that system because we didn't foresee the electric vehicle boom at the time,"

, design manager for the city, which is home to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) , recently explained to

Wan acknowledges that the financial crisis put a halt to the project, but disputes the idea of ​​Masdar City as the first "ghost" and unfinished green city: "Let's say we have gone through an evolutionary process."

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