First satellite pics of futuristic £800bn desert metropolis megacity The Line

Diggers have been pictured making a start on an £800bn walled mega city in the middle of a desert.

At 110miles long, The Line looked like the stuff of science fiction when images of its proposed architecture were released earlier this year.

New satellite images, however, reveal that the idea was not some far fetched fantasy but an extraordinary reality for developers in Saudi Arabia.

READ MORE: Drone gives first glimpse at Saudia Arabia's 'insane' $1trillion 'The Line' megacity

In October, drone footage from photography company Ot Sky was published by Dezeen magazine showing heavy machinery taking the first steps towards building a self-contained, mirrored civilisation.

Colours help identify what's what in aerial imagery from Chang Guang Satellite Technology that shows a stretch of The Line (in yellow) is visible from space already.

With the project potentially taking 50 years until completion, it is little wonder that a giant settlement for construction workers has also been established adjacent to the mega city. The area has been labelled NEOM Construction Village Camp.

The purple blotches in the picture are 1.7 million cubic metres of dug up land that has been shifted from 200ft wide Line. If you zoom in enough, you'll be able to see around 425 diggers marked out as red dots along the yellow.

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Stand out features boasted by The Line developers, firstly include two 1,600 feet tall buildings that will run parallel to each other for the entire 110 miles, from the Red Sea coastline.

"The Line" city's executive director for urban planning Tarek Qaddumi said previously: "Irrespective of its physical stature, it will end up demonstrating that the world has the human capacity, the technology and the commitment to revolutionize our current way of life."

It is thought that de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has earmarked billions for The Line as part of NEOM, an umbrella plan for a vast network of "smart" cities powered by renewable energy.

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Analysts are highly sceptical of whether a desert city of such magnitude can actually run without fossil fuels.

Philip Oldfield, head of the built environment school at the University of New South Wales Sydney poured cold water on the idea: "Utopian thinking is important; it helps us challenge the preconceptions in the built environment that have generated conventional outcomes which we know contribute to environmental degradation.

"But I think the sustainability and liveability arguments here are naïve."

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To create The Line, developers have had to displace local desert communities including the Huwaitat tribe of which Alya Alhwaiti is a member.

She said: "It's absolutely a disaster and I'm disappointed."

The oil rich nation is no stranger to massive ground-breaking (some would say vanity) projects involving massive construction, such as the King Salman Park, a park being built in the capital Riyad which will be seven times the size of Hyde Park when completed.

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