Imagine the following scenario: you land from your flight, cross the airport without pushing and then, you cross a high-speed subway line that takes you to the city center in less than 20 minutes. Once you arrive you do not need to call a taxi for the hotel: a small autonomous bus is waiting for you at the exit and already knows where you are going.
After a short walk (nothing more than a few hundred meters) through a city that has no cars and roads but open squares and lush green spaces, the bus leaves you at your hotel.
Check in is not necessary. An identification system person has already done it for you. Go straight to your room, touch the door handle with your fingers for authentication and the door opens. Your vacation can begin.
In the same amount of time it would normally take just to get through passport control, you have reached The Line - a 170-kilometer Red Sea city in northwestern Saudi Arabia currently under construction.
It is expected to be completed by 2030, and will be equipped with every high-tech component that is usually found in Movies science fiction, from flying taxis to humanoids.
And while much of the project is still a vision, the designers and architects working to build The Line City are already providing an exciting idea of what the cities could soon look like. smart cities.
Η Line is a part of the Neom project, a portmanteau of the Greek word "new" and the Arabic word "future", and which is built on a piece of land the size of Belgium in the desert. The Neom project was announced by the Government of Saudi Arabia as part of the "Vision for 2030", with the aim of creating a "living laboratory", with super-automation, creative entrepreneurship and sustainable initiatives, with an estimated total cost of $ 500 billion.
Within the Neom project, the city of Line will stretch for about 200 kilometers, a corridor that will be dug into the desert and will consist of smaller communities that will be connected to each other by a single metro line of extremely high speed. No cars, but AI-enabled micro-mobility services, no roads or congestion, but an urban environment in which 95% of nature will be protected.
All of this will work through Neom's 100% renewable network.
The Line city will be organized on three levels. At the top, the people: arranged in community “units” of about 80.000 citizens each. Residents will never be further than a five-minute walk from anything they need, including schools, medical clinics and recreational facilities. Underneath, there will be an invisible service layer dedicated to logistics, and below that, a “backbone” layer, containing the transportation system that will connect communities at high speed. The transition from one end of the line to the other, as promised by the team of the Neom project, it will never take more than 20 minutes.
The city will have its own operating system, called Neos. The operating system collects data on the operation of the services as efficiently as possible. IoT devices will be everywhere in all communities to upgrade buildings and save energy. AI systems will balance the grid so that there is no waste of energy. The data will be used to monitor the status of various items throughout the city, and in each of them there will be a "status indicator" to predict maintenance requirements.
When smart cities currently use about 1% of available data, operating Neos will use 90% of community information, says Joseph Bradley, head of technology at Neom.
Let's move on to another level:
The city of Line will know all its inhabitants. As soon as they get off the plane, the operating Neos will predict the next move and act accordingly.
The functional Neos will know where the residents are at all times and will monitor their health. The operating system will react immediately if someone falls down and stays on the ground for a long time, sending drones to shoot video and deciding which vehicle would be appropriate, if necessary, to provide medical assistance.
In this city, citizens are encouraged to share their data, and in return can have a high-value, sensitive, and highly personalized urban environment.
How do you think others have the initiative for you?
About 20 years ago, an old colleague, Giannis, to be precise, a teacher, I would say in finance, with a slightly sloping thought like any intelligent mind, in some aversion to his speech he had told me:
"Soon the camels (meaning the rich Arabs) will return to where they started a century ago. In the sand and in their camels since oil will cease to be the driving force of everything internationally.
In the end, maybe John and every John who had and still has the same reasoning, made a small mistake. To overlook a parameter that predicts and / or foresees how great is the wealth acquired by the "camels" and that they have not yet said their last word as rulers of the planet…
For the story and since the post brought me back years, I will mention something else for my fun. Irrelevant to the text.
I stopped having contacts with Giannis because, then, in his reasoning that I mentioned earlier, he had ended by saying: “when the camels will cease to have a primary role, again, the real and eternal power that rules the world will come to the fore. And this (according to John and his companion), was the Nordic countries. Like Canada, Russia, Germany.
This last word mentioned, this country, was the reason I stopped having any relationship with him since since the Germans "created a problem" on planet Earth, it is only ~ 70 years away from today. 50 since the debate took place.
And by virtue of the "problem" they created in the universe, I refuse to forget, I refuse to stop wanting the crime of the past to be repeated again and again and again…
As I refuse to accept the separation of people into elite (who has everything for fun) and "us" of the rest…
With appreciation even to those who have been accountable for "staying safe" since I believe that the creation is in disagreement and thinking that it will be a big night that is coming, but not sunless
G.Th.K.