The village is aglow! In episode 97 of Overthink, Ellie and David guide you through the ideas that make a metropolis tick. From Plato’s spotless Republic to Saudi Arabia’s futuristic The Line, they talk the foul and the vibrant of what it means to live in a city. Why are there so few public plazas in Brasilia? Why did David lose his wallet in Mexico City? How do gridded street layouts reflect colonial fantasies? And how did a medieval woman writer, Christine de Pizan, beat Greta Gerwig to the...
Hello, and welcome to Overthink, the podcast.
Where your two favorite city dwellers talk about ideas and our everyday life.
I'm Dr.
Ellie Anderson.
And I'm Dr.
David Pena Guzman.
David.
I was hanging out with some friends recently, just chilling, watching some YouTube videos,
and got completely mesmerized by a video showing the plan for a new city called the Line in Saudi Arabia.
Oh, my gosh.
Yes, the Line.
How could we not talk about this at the very beginning?
Yeah.
So the Line is a city currently under construction that is shaped, well, like a line, and it's 110 miles long.
It's anticipated to house 9 million people.
So Saudi Arabia is experiencing this population explosion, and they need a new city in order to accommodate all of,
you know, the people who are moving there.
And what's interesting about it is that it's designed to have no cars or carbon emissions.
It would be run entirely on renewable energy.
And one purpose of building it in a line is that it has less of an impact on the surrounding area.