Wednesday, August 17, 2022

THE LINE: Is there a place for the domestic cat in the city of the future?

Saudi Arabia has proposed an incredibly impressive and entirely novel city of the future called THE LINE. It is a city compressed into a line 170 km long, 500 m tall and 200 m wide, sandwiched between mirrored glass. Inside is entirely futuristic with entire communities provided for. It is a 'civilisational revolution that puts humans first' according to the designers. 

But is there a place in this world for domestic cats? Clearly, they are all going to be full-time indoor cats but of course the indoors is amazing. This is a city enclosed by apparently glass which reflects the harsh sunlight in Saudi Arabia.

Inside THE LINE
Inside THE LINE.

Of course, the country has the money to build this and it is going to be incredibly expensive (trillions of dollars). The video starts off with compressing the horizontal nature of cities into a much tighter but vertical space which appears to be the underlying modus operandi of this development. It is in preparation for a time when there isn't enough space to build cities horizontally and they have to go upwards.

You may have to click on the play button twice 😊.

They say that the city will run on 100% renewable energy and 95% of land will be preserved from nature. So, everything outside the city is left for nature to thrive in. That is an idea which appeals to me. Currently in many parts of the world, there isn't enough space for wild animals to thrive and indeed many species are being endangered and becoming extinct because of this problem.

"Everything will be accessible within a five-minute walk and an efficient public transport network will offer an end-to-end journey in just 20 minutes. Automated services will be powered by artificial intelligence."
In this novel development humans are separated from nature to allow the wild creatures of the world to live their own lives. They say that there will be no roads, cars or emissions which I presume means inside the construction but they say you can travel from one end to the other in 20 minutes. You do it by train or some other automated transport. 

THE LINE
THE LINE. Screenshot.

THE LINE is planned to accommodate 9 million people but its footprint will be just 34 km². The city of London has a human population of around 9 million as I recall. London has an area of 607 mi² according to my Internet research.

Back to cats! This novel city sis for humans built by humans and designed by humans. Is there a place within it for domestic cats? And how good will it be. It is a human-centric concept being built for humans.

No comments:

Search This Blog