Interesting 25min documentary about the many glaring conceptual/environmental/social issues of "The Line", the monstrous, 180km long, dystopian megacity being planned/built in Saudi Arabia...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-jtIRvmbsk
(Some minor argumentative/perspective issues re: traditional cities, i.e. urban sprawl and traffic problems are only indirectly a result of century old organic growth, but also caused by things which could be changed for the better with sufficient political/cultural will, like updating zoning laws, limiting real estate speculation, limiting privatized spaces, investing in decent public transport/infrastructure, supporting working from home etc. — none of it new...)
If I learned one thing from working with generative design for years, nature always wins, in the end... One can try to impose artificial constraints for some temporary, local improvements, but top-down designed solutions (usually by a small group of people who think they know it all) hardly ever stand the test of time, or the test of chaos and unpredictable events... Natural systems and those designed to be (or rather assembled) bottom-up are much more amenable to these forces of change... In the case of projects like "The Line", it's just upsetting how many resources & lives will literally be wasted for these kinds of vanity projects... Ozymandias says hi!
#Architecture #TheLine #UrbanDesign #TopDown #BottomUp