Aerial footage shows insane progress and scale of Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion giga-project ‘The Line’
You might have seen concept art for The Line - a huge mirrored skyscraper laid on its side in the desert, which looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.
It's a project of almost impossible scale from Saudi Arabia and hopes to be complete by 2030, housing a whopping 9 million residents.
The Line will be 170km long, if it reaches the full scale that it's currently aiming for, and around 200m wide the whole way along that stretch - this makes it basically a city's worth of space, just laid out very differently to what we're used to.
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The project has taken years to get off the ground, unsurprisingly, and is rumored to cost up to $1 trillion, so huge are the challenges involved in building it.
Now, though, Giles Pendleton, the Chief Operating Officer for The Line, has taken to LinkedIn to share some pretty impressive aerial shots of the work currently going on with the project.
He wrote in the post: "How to answer the naysayers about the incredible work being done in NEOM? Show a cross section of the world's largest building site from the mountains to the sea."
The photos, which look like they were taken on a helicopter ride, show off a variety of angles of what's happening on The Line right now.
One amazing shot shows the sheer scale of the project - it looks down from above at a landscape that has had lines drawn into it by roads, outlining where the construction will eventually sit, and heading off into the far distance.
There are also plenty of photos of some of the infrastructure popping up to build The Line - big work sites, factories and what looks like housing for some of the many, many workers who will be needed for the project.
It's all part of Neom, a new urban area that's being built in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.
Work on The Line seems to be starting near the coast, and you can see the brilliant blue of the ocean in some of the photos.
What if we could start again?
— NEOM (@NEOM) July 25, 2022
THE LINE rethinks everything we know about how people live, work and play. A 170 km-long vertical city, designed around people, rather than cars. A revolution in urban living. A city that delivers new wonders for the world.#TheLINE #NEOM pic.twitter.com/Op6HyO5gEi
The project is making some big promises, from climate-controlled gardens to a transit system that will span the whole length of the building. The plans look pretty extraordinary, as the sleek building is entirely mirrored.
It's one of the most unique projects under construction anywhere in the world, so it's pretty amazing to get a glimpse of its starting point.
Even seeing these photos, the scale is hard to get your head around - but with the sheer resources that are being thrown at it, we don't doubt it'll become a reality.