The Three-Dimensional Linear City: A Model to Achieve Global Sustainability: Fid-Bau Portal

The Three-Dimensional Linear City: A Model to Achieve Global Sustainability

Felici, Marco

The recent controversial project of “Neom—The Line” has brought the concept of three-dimensional linear city (3DLC) back to public attention. This urban development model offers exceptional potential for the attaining of sustainable development goals (SDGs), but this potential is only partially realized in these projects. The 3DLC model was originally conceived by the Radical avant-gardes and developed in an ecological direction by master architects Paolo Soleri and Luigi Pellegrin. To achieve SDGs through this model, it is necessary to select proper locations and to involve an open relationship with the physical and social context. If we could make this relationship a really permeable one, we would achieve both a lower ecological footprint and a more inclusive, incremental and shared sociality. We would thereby restore resilient communities’ power over their settlement choices, while equipping them with infrastructures guaranteeing the right to equal access to urban benefits. The urban development model I propose here was created and tested over more than 20 years of research and hands-on workshops, whose participants put themselves in the shoes of a community intending to fashion its own habitat, in order to test the potential of a participatory approach. Striving to meet the requirements of the New Urban Agenda (NUA), I therefore propose a 3DLC to be developed through and between cities along existing railways. It is a provocative proposal: not a specific, fixed project, but a strategic masterplan at a worldwide scale. It is a solution that is at once material and immaterial, as well as open, incremental and shared. It acts as an infrastructure for a new mindset, that of “hypersustainable civilization”. Its purpose is to offer every community fair opportunities while maintaining individuality and resilience.