construction mammoth building-city LineIn the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert, It continues to move forward with endless machines, cranes and workers working tirelessly on the sands that will host this unprecedented project. As previously reported in this newspaper, it is a linear city. It is 170 kilometers long and only 200 meters wide and 500 meters high. The strangest thing is that The Saudi regime presents the initiative as an example of sustainability.
And yet, can such a pharaonic business be considered truly sustainable, with all its implications about the environment? Architect Luis Lope de Toledo, a YouTube channel dedicated to these issues, has devoted a complete video to analyzing the environmental impacts (and also livability) of such a unique city. His conclusion is that It is a “utopian and unrealistic” project and, of course, difficult to describe as sustainable.
To begin with, this refers to the wall of the building, which will be completely covered with reflective mirrors. “What will happen to all of them? Birds in the area? Not only are you forcing them to change their migration routes, hundreds may die of stigma. against their windows,” says Lope de Toledo, referring to the fact that this huge wall will not be seen by these animals.
But doubts about its sustainability go even further. crown prince Mohamed Bin Salman claimed that this city will have a zero carbon footprint once it is operational.“But the problem is that the enormous carbon cost of its construction will outweigh the environmental benefits that may arise later on,” explains the architect.
CO2 emissions as much as the whole of London in 4 years
In fact, Lope de Toledo echoes what Philip Oldfield, director of the School for the Environment in Sydney (Australia), has said: “You can’t build a 500-metre-high building with low-carbon materials. requires an extraordinary amount of steel, glass and concrete.” Actually, Oldfield calculates that the construction of The Line will generate more than 1.8 billion tonnes of embodied CO2, or the equivalent of four years’ total UK emissions..
One of the reasons The Line’s supposed sustainability is based on is that it won’t have cars in it. The project ensures that, according to its advertisement, “everything is within a five-minute walk of everywhere.” This will be possible with the implementation of a train line that will run from one end of the city to the other for 174 kilometers.
The line guarantees that this route will be covered in only 20 minutes, but this is according to Luis Lope de Toledo’s calculations, He said the train had to go more than 550 kilometers per hour.”, even without intermediate stops, even though the fastest railway currently in existence is in Japan and “travels at 460 kilometers per hour”. “If he wants to meet the 20-minute thing, he’s going to have to develop a lot of technology,” he adds.
It doesn’t seem like much thought has been put into how to fix the problem either. lightening It is a city sandwiched between two walls 500 meters high and only 200 meters wide. Same way, ventilation to be inside It’s a mystery. “Did it ever occur to you to think that instead of a facade full of mirrors, that skin had to be porous so that air could pass through it,” she wonders.
All this makes it necessary to resort to air conditioning and ventilation technology, which once again questions the sustainability of the project.
He doesn’t mention the following in his video: drinking waterLarge quantities will be needed to feed the population and also irrigate the abundant vegetation that can be seen in virtual recreations. The solution given by the promoters consists of seawater desalination plants to be powered by solar energy. However, other experts have expressed doubts about the viability of this renewable energy to operate a facility of this size.
Work is now in full swing and hundreds of excavators, cranes and other machinery are busy leveling the ground for the first part of the job. No builds of The Line are yet to be seen, but 45,000 posts nailedaccording to the local press, it is an extraordinary figure with up to 60 pile peaks per day.
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Contact address of the environment department: [email protected]