Lusail City - 2022 World Cup city rises in the desert
If you're trying to create the perfect 21st-century city, it helps to start with a blank slate.
Even if that slate is a sweltering strip of sand.
That's essentially what the government of Qatar and its developers are trying with Lusail, an ambitious planned city on 28 square miles of waterfront desert along the Persian Gulf.
Now under construction, the compact city will contain a commercial district, a lagoon, four islands, two marinas, an upscale shopping mall, a hospital, a zoo, two golf courses and housing for some 250,000 people.
It also will feature an 86,000-seat soccer stadium, surrounded by a moat, that's expected to host the final game of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Residents and visitors will get around via a light-rail network, a water-taxi system and a network of underground pedestrian tunnels.
And all the energy, communications and transportation systems will be run with the help of computers from a single command center, making Lusail a "smart" city that can automatically adapt to changing traffic and weather conditions.
"It's very much an opportunity to build a vision of the future," said Barry Hughes, senior vice president at HOK, the global architectural firm that designed Lusail's Marina Mall shopping center.
Funded by the oil-rich Qatari government, Lusail can offer innovative solutions to urban problems because it's being built from the ground up.
For example, the city's gas, electric and water lines are being laid out in an underground network of tunnels, allowing for maintenance work that won't disrupt buildings, roads or people above.
The city will be fitted with a network of surveillance cameras, monitored around the clock, to keep streets safe.
Read more on cnn.com and watch this video to get an idea about this spectacular project.
