Great article! What also fascinates me is that The Line‘s marketing gives us an insight into the world-view that these kind of projects try to envision.
It imagines a city filled with white collar tech-bros, entrepreneurs, and luxury leisure-seekers, where there is no tension or conflict or issues. But as we know, this isn‘t how cities work, as there is no mention of any type of political activity; ‚invisible‘ labour like cleaners, cooks, maintenance, caretakers etc; and any potential issues are hand-waved off with AI or technological solutions. Its completely detached from real systemic social, economic, and political issues cities across the world face - but they have the audacity to call it a
revolution in urban living.
Its less a city and more of a super-sized gated community/investment scheme for the wealthy
Love it. this gives me throwback vibes to many of the broader arguments against "command economy" in general, and especially the book "the road to serfdom" by Hayek and "a conflict of visions" by sowell.
Basically, many of the things we value are emergent results of localized, self-interested action, and can't be brute-forced.
Def notes of Hayek in my thinking on this one, probably some Jane Jacobs as well.
One of the questions in my head writing this one has to do with what it means to plan and at what levels of geography or population is it best to make what decisions. The Line is on one end of that extreme, still considering where I think we ought to strike the balance...more on that in future posts, though.
This jibes with the conception of a city as having its own life independent of the human lives of its dwellers and planners. A sort of “can’t fool mother nature” thing.
It’s not original of course. The latest and most thorough explication of “city as organism”, where I got it at least, was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals. (Pirsig the midwesterner’s explanation/impression of NYC.)
They likely overestimated how many people would be willing to live in what you aptly title a futuristic dead mall. But not by much. And while I’ve never understood the appeal of Dubai, people are tripping over themselves to relocate there or somewhere exactly like it.
Some folks think this is also a play by MBS to develop an internationalized economic power base outside the influence of wahabi hardliners. I don’t have any citable evidence (people willing to say this aren’t willing to write it down), but I suspect this is fundamentally a political project (again, based on a bad theoretical understand of cities)
Great article! What also fascinates me is that The Line‘s marketing gives us an insight into the world-view that these kind of projects try to envision.
It imagines a city filled with white collar tech-bros, entrepreneurs, and luxury leisure-seekers, where there is no tension or conflict or issues. But as we know, this isn‘t how cities work, as there is no mention of any type of political activity; ‚invisible‘ labour like cleaners, cooks, maintenance, caretakers etc; and any potential issues are hand-waved off with AI or technological solutions. Its completely detached from real systemic social, economic, and political issues cities across the world face - but they have the audacity to call it a
revolution in urban living.
Its less a city and more of a super-sized gated community/investment scheme for the wealthy
Love it. this gives me throwback vibes to many of the broader arguments against "command economy" in general, and especially the book "the road to serfdom" by Hayek and "a conflict of visions" by sowell.
Basically, many of the things we value are emergent results of localized, self-interested action, and can't be brute-forced.
Def notes of Hayek in my thinking on this one, probably some Jane Jacobs as well.
One of the questions in my head writing this one has to do with what it means to plan and at what levels of geography or population is it best to make what decisions. The Line is on one end of that extreme, still considering where I think we ought to strike the balance...more on that in future posts, though.
Hayek!
This jibes with the conception of a city as having its own life independent of the human lives of its dwellers and planners. A sort of “can’t fool mother nature” thing.
And also kinda explains why EPCOT is an attraction but not a community, neither experimental nor prototype, nor “of tomorrow”.
This.
It’s not original of course. The latest and most thorough explication of “city as organism”, where I got it at least, was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila:_An_Inquiry_into_Morals. (Pirsig the midwesterner’s explanation/impression of NYC.)
They likely overestimated how many people would be willing to live in what you aptly title a futuristic dead mall. But not by much. And while I’ve never understood the appeal of Dubai, people are tripping over themselves to relocate there or somewhere exactly like it.
Some folks think this is also a play by MBS to develop an internationalized economic power base outside the influence of wahabi hardliners. I don’t have any citable evidence (people willing to say this aren’t willing to write it down), but I suspect this is fundamentally a political project (again, based on a bad theoretical understand of cities)
It needs DEEP AFFORDABILITY.
Maybe … long affordability?