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Despite efforts to make a planned city in the Saudi desert sustainable, its design may simply create problems.
In October 2022, structural work began on a megaproject called “The Line,” a 170-kilometer-long city in the Saudi Arabian desert. The plan envisions another nine million people living in a domain of only thirteen square miles, a domain comparable to Burlington, Vermont, which has a population of only 45,000.
This feat will be achieved by an exclusive urban planning concept: the line will consist of two long rows of skyscrapers about 1,600 feet that will face about 650 feet, surrounding the desert city like a wall. In addition, urban life be as sustainable as possible. Cars will have no place in this futuristic city. The entire energy source will be emission-free.
But in a paper published in June in npj Urban Sustainability, mathematician Rafael Prieto-Curiel and physicist Dániel Kondor of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) argue that the line is not exactly mathematically sustainable. “A line is the least effective way imaginable of a city,” Prieto-Curiel said in a news release about the CSH research. He added that, instead, cities are sometimes round.
The biggest challenge with linear technique lies in the enormous distances involved. Choose two other people at random in the planned city and they’ll be on average 35 miles apart, Prieto-Curiel and Kondor calculate. For comparison, let’s take the South African city of Johannesburg. Its largest metropolitan area has a population you can’t imagine, but it spans 853 square miles. In Ohannesburg, two other people are separated by only about 34 kilometers apart on average.
The maximum speed activity aims to solve the problems of transport and mobility on the line. But for this solution to work, the city will need around 86 stations for both inhabitants to have access on foot in this car-free metropolis. The numerous obstacles will increase the duration of the adventure and prevent the exercises from reaching the desired maximum speeds. In addition, a traveler will take an average of more than 60 minutes to reach their destination, Prieto-Curiel and Kondor calculate.
According to the researchers, a more effective solution is needed: “the Circle”. If the skyscrapers planned on the Line were arranged in a circle, the disruptions of long distances would be solved. A circle of the same domain as the line (13 square miles) has a diameter of 4. 1 miles.
The average distance between two randomly chosen people would then be only 3 km. A high-speed exercise would not be mandatory at all because, in theory, everything would be within walking distance. A few more bus lines and motorcycle lanes The city’s circular shape would be less sensational from a design standpoint but more “desirable because it reduces distances and energy needed for transportation,” Prieto-Curiel and Kondor write in their paper.
The main explanation for this merit is that, mathematically, a circular line is two-dimensional, while a line is one-dimensional. In one dimension, the number of available positions is adjusted linearly with the distance a user is willing to travel. Two dimensions, the number increases with the square of the distance.
In addition, one-dimensional structures are much more vulnerable than higher-dimensional ones. For example, if a fire breaks out at one station on the line, many other people will be cut off from a giant part of the city.
Between his and Kondor’s criticisms, Prieto-Curiel struck a positive note in the recent press release: attention to urban form and progression is timely and important, he said. “Cities, especially in Africa, are growing,” Prieto said. Curiel added.
This article was originally published in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and reproduced with permission.
Arab American scientist
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