“The man dreams, the work is born”. In Arabia, the dream of Fernando Pessoa’s verse is the raw material of the work. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s idea of building a new city has begun to take shape on earth: a 170-kilometre-long line from the Red Sea to the mountains and into the desert is taking shape in the Tabuk district as the longest building in the world.
“The Line”, a set of interconnected buildings that will form a city 170 kilometers long, “A Linha” in Portuguese, will stretch from the Red Sea inland to the outskirts of the city of Tabuk, seat of the district where this revolution in Saudi Arabia began to take hold. The set of adjoining buildings, covered in glass over the entire length, should cost 500 billion euros, and rise 500 meters above the ground. A 200-metre-wide strip where six to nine million people should fit, including spaces for housing, work and entertainment, with water courses, gardens, parks and various sports facilities.
According to an estimate presented in 2021, in documents accessed by the “Wall Street Journal” (WSJ) newspaper, the undertaking has a completion date of 2050. The project, conceived by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, consists of two parallel rows of buildings, which will stretch along a 170 kilometer line, crossed from one end to the other by a high-speed train, which promises to take residents from the sea to the mountains, or vice versa, in about 20 minutes.
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