“The Line is important because it is the first time we are working to respond to the challenges of planning and building cities with a new approach.” The architect Albert Civit, former head of the Institut Català del Sòl summarised the impact of this urban development project promoted by Saudi Arabia in a conference shared with the lawyer specialising in urban law and lecture of Master's Degree in Law and Legal Practice, Pablo Molina.

Both experts explained the Zero Gravity Urbanism concept at the second conference of the Foros series, organised by the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona), which took place yesterday in Barcelona. 

Zero Gravity Urbanism is a proposal to rethink cities and imagine them in three dimensions, and not from the traditional horizontal aspect. “With this vision, horizontal transport and services are replaced by vertical ones. The same density that we find in several blocks of a large city can be translated into a three-dimensional space,” Civit explained.

Juan Trias de BES, architect and lecturer at UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, presented the conference. “From the academy,” he said, “we must delve into and debate projects that allow us to rethink how architecture responds today to the challenges of our time.”

Zero Gravity Urbanism: change of focus

“In the Zero Gravity Urbanism model,” Molina explained, “land as such ceases to be a relevant piece of the equation, and the type of real estate asset becomes more important. Property is a square of air, with limits that are fixed with coordinates, and can be stacked; residential, leisure, or services, one on top of the other, joined to a lateral structure”. Molina added that “from this perspective, legal concepts that have been in force up to now will have to change.”

Among other examples, Albert Civit and Pablo Molina spoke about the main characteristics of The Line’s urban development project: a linear city 170 km long and 200 m wide, operating on 100% renewable energy, in which citizens have all the services within a 15-minute walk and in which private cars are not necessary. 

“Historical changes have transformed cities, and now we are in a time of profound change. More and more people will live in large cities: it is estimated that by the end of the century, it will be 75% of the world’s population. The way our cities are organised must change,” said Albert Civit. 

Molina explained that the appearance of the car generated phenomena such as urban sprawl, extended low density neighbourhoods with few heterogeneous communities. “The climate emergency must be resolved in cities, as they are responsible for the emission of 70% of greenhouse gases.”

Civit said that, in his opinion, the current newly created cities (of which there are 150 worldwide) are trying to respond to current challenges in the traditional way they focused on in the 1960s and 1970s. “We must find another way to address these problems,” he said. “If Ildefons Cerdà came back to life,” Molina said, “he would recognise how we are acting in cities, because the methodology is very similar.”