The Line is dead. Long live The Line!

Linear cities are not a bad idea, and we shouldn't write them off, even if this one was a bust.

The Line was a vast megaproject proposed for Saudi Arabia, a linear city, a 170-kilometre-long wall of mirrored glass, 500 meters tall (higher than the Empire State Building), housing nine million people. It seemed like every major architect in the world was in on it, including one of my heroes from when I was in architecture school, Peter Cook of Archigram.

Alas, after spending $50 billion on foundations, servicing, and who knows what consultants’ fees, the project is on hold. According to Semafor,

“Saudi Arabia’s NEOM has delayed further work on The Line — the planned 170-kilometer long dual skyscrapers once projected to cost more than $1 trillion — until at least after 2030 as the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund shifts spending toward developing infrastructure like ports and data centers."

A few months ago, Alison Killing of the Financial Times did an extraordinary take-down of The Line that is not behind the FT’s paywall and is worth a read- End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled.

I have followed The Line since it was first proposed, because I was intrigued by concept of a linear city, and have written about them many times. From the original pitch pitch for the Line:

"THE LINE is a never-before-seen approach to urbanization – a 170km-long [105 miles] linear urban development of multiple, hyper-connected communities, with walkable neighborhoods integrated with public parks and the natural landscape. It is a model of urban design and livability in harmony with nature for the 21st century and beyond."

In fact, it has been seen before. The genius of linear cities is that they are based on the transportation ideas of the era. The Line was to be built on top of hyperloops, later changed to high-speed trains that could take you from end to end in 20 minutes.

In 1882 Arturo Soria y Mata planned and built a linear city in Madrid based on the streetcar or tram; he meant to “ruralize the city and urbanize the countryside.” Soria wrote:

“Transport is the fundamental problem of town planning. Since the railway provides the best means of transport which fast, frequent, and cheap, it follows that the layout of the town should conform with the linear path of the railway.”

Soria said it in 1882; Jarrett Walker tweeted it in 2019. Basically, How we get around dictates what we build. If you get around by streetcar or Hyperloop, building it in a linear path makes sense.

In 1910, Edgar Chambliss proposed Roadtown. It houses a thousand people per mile and is surrounded by farmland, so people can move along its length to get things that are made elsewhere, but one need only go perpendicular to the town to find (or grow) food. Bountiful electric power would make it all possible.

There is an electric train at the bottom, apartments above, opening out into narrow plots of land, everything you need just by going up or down. “A man may work as a shoe stitcher for three hours, turn off the power and go out and hoe potatoes.” Then you head up to the roof.

“In the center of the roof will be a promenade that will be covered, and in the winter enclosed with glass and steam heated. On the outer edges of the roof will be a path for bicyclists and skaters, who will use rubber-tired roller skates. “

When a city is laid out in a linear fashion like this, it actually becomes easy to build and to service. In Roadtown “every house will have a bath and shower, and even the soap can be pumped along the linear building. A central vacuum system will keep it all clean.”

In 1965 two young architecture grads, Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman, proposed the Jersey Corridor project, a 20-mile long linear city. The plan was that it would eventually run from Maine to Miami. The idea was to have two buildings running parallel, the bigger residential and recreational, and the smaller commercial industrial. It is described in Life Magazine as having lower levels of parking and roadway, then an endless linear “downtown” of schools, churches, hospitals, offices and services.

“Six stories above ground it provides ample space for open-air cafes, shops, and pedestrian strolling– and striking vistas. Above are apartments, and on the very top restaurants, pools and penthouses.”

In 1995, Quebec architect Gilles Gauthier proposed a linear city for Montreal which I thought was an ingenious update of Roadtown. He wrote on his site:

“The Linear City is my contribution to gradually transforming our cities to house billions of people benefiting from more efficient public transportation, respect for the environment and a much better quality of life for all. This architectural research aims at increasing our quality of life by bringing the country-side to the city and a public transportation more efficient than personal cars, that are a major source of noise and pollution.”

Clearly a visionary, he told me via an email: "This is my contribution to try to make cities for billions of people with functional public transport, ecological cities and better social contacts and this with a realistic transition." More in Treehugger.

Meanwhile, back in Saudi Arabia,

A lot of money has been poured into the line, and it is already the world’s largest earthworks. The Saudis say that it is paused and is being redesigned to make it lest costly. Semafor writes that “Postponing development of one of the kingdom’s most iconic projects is the latest sign that Saudi Arabia is taking a more pragmatic view of its ambitions.”

But I do hope that some version of the linear city gets built. I still think they are an interesting way of designing a city. I like Chambliss’s vision of being able to step outside from work and be in a garden. I like Gauthier’s idea of a world where you don’t need a car. The Line in Saudi Arabia may be dead, but long live the idea of the linear city.