A NEW ERA OF CITY ARCHITECTURE: NEOM’S THE LINE

Integrated smart agricultural machinery has shaped global agricultural development. This includes Automated Irrigation Systems which have enhanced the efficiency of water systems to harvest Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) that contain artificial characteristics such as increased resistance to pests and improved nutritional value.

However, the Philippines is far behind in the advancement of agricultural technology as it continues its backward traditional farming practices. This is because agricultural research and development in the country is under-funded and the incorporation of farming equipment has not been widely spread (Baconguis, 2022). This data does not complement the statistic that 40 percent of Filipino workers are in the field of agriculture.

This led to five University of Santo Tomas-Faculty of Engineering (UST-FoE) students, Gerard Tenedero, Patrick Diaz, Vincent Especi, Asuka Watanabe, and Cheska Desagun, together with Asst. Prof. Anthony James Bautista, DT, UST-FoE Acting Assistant Dean, to develop a Fertilizer Tank Sprayer drone attachment hoping to contribute to the growth of agricultural technology in the country.

The Drone Attachment Tank Sprayer (DATS) comprises a pump, water container, three nozzles, and a casing that contains the Arduino program, battery, wirings, and switch to the power system. The unit is fastened to the drone for it to function.

“As it hovers above the rice crops, by pressing a button from the RC controller that was programmed in the Arduino through a relay, the pump would activate and the prototype would then spray the fertilizer at the desired height and starting location,” the researchers said in an interview with Thomasian Engineer.

The Filipino Farmers from Nueva Ecija, which is also the province that produces the majority of the nation’s rice crops, are the key demographic and region where the DATS would be deployed.

Assistance and support of the AQUA Drone and RoboTractor research team, projects that are also led by Asst. Dean Bautista, were of great help to the DATS team. Although the drone attachment had undergone test runs earlier this year, the team admits that there are numerous problems yet to be solved.

“During the flight tests, we had to make continuous adjustments to the design to have a successful take-off and flight while ensuring that the entire unit would still perform as desired,” the team shared their experience during the test runs.

The ability to effectively introduce smart farming to the country’s local farmers proceeds to be the priority goal of this project. The team emphasizes that by having a key demographic, the introduced agricultural operation can be efficient on both an economic and environmental level.

When asked about their vision for DATS upon completion, the team responds that they plan to introduce further improvements and aspire that the drone attachment will be adapted by rice farms in the country. In the hopes that the project will be utilized in the field of rice farming, the team believes that this will be an opportunity to showcase the impact of technology on agriculture.

Tarek Qaddumi, Executive Director of Urban Planning of NEOM claims that ‘The Line’ Megacity “rethinks our urban life from the ground up,” in an exclusive interview with Dezeen, an architecture, interiors and design magazine.

The megacity stretching 170 kilometers across the Saudi Arabian desert prospects to house nine million residents, and will supposedly run under renewable energy, with no cars nor carbon emissions. His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, founder of NEOM, envisions this as an identity of being an agent of progress and change.

Despite these ambitious proposals, NEOM remains steadfast. Will ‘The Line’ mark the start of a new era owwwwf city architecture, or will it fail spectacularly in its ambitions?

One of its main goals is to create a net-zero carbon city. Although the megacity has prepared different methods of preventing carbon emissions, there is the probability that it is not possible to completely eradicate the emission of carbon in a definite space, most especially one housing nine million people.

The project heavily emphasizes its ‘no cars, no street’ vision. Indeed, curbing the emission of carbon dioxide has been the dream of many researchers and scholars of science. Before we marvel at how idealistic this may be, we need to realize first whether this is attainable and whether the resources spent on this project would not go to waste. That said, reaching this very dream may prove to be the Achilles heel of this project.

The Line will supposedly have its own transportation system that would transport residents end-to-end within 20 minutes. Amenities are said to be accessible within a five-minute walk while parks and natural settings only require two minutes to reach which removes the need for cars and other carbon dioxide-emitting vehicles. Artificial Intelligence (AI) would be incharge of monitoring the city; it is expected that the AIs would use algorithms to construct models in order to “improve the daily life for its citizens.” Other than that, this project is targeted to only use renewable energy to sustain itself.

Another goal of the megacity is to address the population density in cities. Whereas the presented solution is the production of vertical housing instead of a landscape topography. About 80,000 people can be reached within a 5-minute travel going upwards or downwards through the city.

However, three things must be addressed to realize this: whether the alternative transportation will be cost-efficient and energy-saving, a sufficient degree of efficiency will be met to replace cars, and a monitoring framework will be needed to ensure the stability of the system. Because case in point, all promises listed above, with a heavy emphasis on no net carbon emissions, is the weak point of this architecture.

With the megacity’s environment-friendly goal–the presented solutions to no carbon emissions, use of AI monitoring, alternative transportation, renewable energy dependency, vertical neighborhood, and the desalination process to produce potable water, altogether, does not equate to a self-sustaining city.

Smart farming can positively impact the farmers, ultimately also benefiting crop consumers. This project is only a glimpse of how technology can impact our country’s agriculture economically; more so since the Philippines largely relies on agriculture. With the proper funding and concentrated research on farming equipment, farming productivity can heighten greatly.

Possibly, in the first year of operation, all prepared measures and features will be executed properly. But in the long run, given that this is a project meant to sustain a lifetime, the megacity is bound to fail its ambitions. Perhaps, The Line’s hopes are meant to stay as a wish, with goals that remain to be a setting in a fiction novel.

Everything that is new does not need to be normal. But for it to be accepted by people, it needs a degree of certainty and some sense of plausibility. Unless the key points asked above are given light, it would be impossible to imagine how this project would be built, much less how it would fare. And until we see more of the plans laid down for The Line, this new era of city architecture will remain a dream or until we see a glimpse of how it is doing by 2030.