In 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) announced audacious plans to build an extraordinarily ambitious 10,200-square-mile (26,500-sq-km) urban area called Neom at the northern tip of the Red Sea with a US$1.5-trillion budget.
Different regions of this sprawling urban area would include a floating industrial complex, an island tourist resort, a ski resort, and probably the most famous of all: The Line – a 105-mile-long (170-km), 660-ft-wide (200-m), 1,600-ft-tall (500-m) city. Yes, a 105-mile-long, 100-story skyscraper that will be home to nine million people in one of the most barren lands in the world. More on that later.
For reference, the One World Trade Center in New York City – the seventh tallest building in the world – stands at 1,776 feet (541 m) tall.
The intention is that Neom will be completed by 2039. Many experts are skeptical of the plan, and more recently, there have been many media outlets reporting that the project has been scaled back considerably. There's so much conflicting information going around on the internet that there's no agreed-upon amount of scaling back that we could find.
That being said, MBS is looking to assure the public and the project's investors that it hasn't back-tracked and everything is still going according to plan. That assurance takes the form of an initiative called "Ground X", which has been launched to prove that everything is still on track through photos and live webcams of progress on Neom.
Ground X reportedly has two million photos and live feeds of construction sites and project timelines for each of Neon's zones. However, it's not accessible by the general public, and is only available to investors and vendors. This type of 'transparency' bodes well for those putting up the dough. Sad for the merely curious.
Given that I'm effectively "general public" and lack the credentials to log into Ground X, some further digging led me to Chief Operating Officer of The Line at Neom, Giles Pendleton. He has a series of posts on LinkedIn titled "NEOM is real..." with the latest being "part 15", posted a month ago. "Lots of work visable [sic] across NEOM as camps emerge and infrastructure excavations are starting to show true scale of activities," he says.
Three months ago, in an edited post, Pendleton goes on to say "Latest progress video and despite the incorrect media reporting, another record month on the LINE with our excavation numbers..."
There's a two-minute video attached to his post that's worthy of a quick look. Some of the biggest excavators and dump trucks look like tiny ants within the massive construction zone of The Line in Neom.
Nothing of this magnitude has ever been attempted. Sure, cities like New York City, Tokyo and Beijing are sprawling metropolises that could be considered marvels with the sheer amount of infrastructure required to keep them functioning day-to-day, but these are traditionally built cities that have grown over decades and decades.
"The masterplan for the LINE remains at 170km as we have always spoken about and we have always maintained it will be built in phases," Pendleton says in a post from three months ago. "We are working on Phase 1 which we will launch later this year. Nothing has changed. Imagine trying to build 170km or a city for 9m people all at once, that's like building New York or London in 1 go. It's impossible."
The Line is to be an entirely self-contained city, built between the walls of its 105-mile-long x 0.125-mile-wide x 0.31-mile-tall structure (169 x 200 x 500-m). No roads, no cars. Everything one could ever need within a 5-minute walk in a climate-controlled area. It will only be a 20-minute ride on the high-speed rail within its walls to traverse from one end to the other. Plans even include a soccer stadium with a 45,000-seat capacity for the 2034 World Cup within.
The Line will be powered entirely by the sun and the wind. It will even have its own government – more democratic, as opposed to Saudi Arabia's authoritarian government – in place to encourage tourism and diversity.
At least, that's the plan.
Among other plans for Neom are:
Trojena: a mountainous region with elevations from 4,921 ft (1,500 m) to 8,530 ft (2,600 m), making it the ideal place to put a massive ski resort with over 3,600 hotel rooms, an amphitheater, and retail and dining. It seems far-fetched to have a ski resort in an arid desert, but Neom promises three months of skiing in the Trojena resort every year.
Sindalah: a super-luxury resort island and yacht club on the Red Sea with world-class shopping and cuisine.
Oxagon: what appears to be a strategically placed floating port, complete with factories and offices and the like, powered 100% by renewable energy.
Magna: a 75-mile (120-km) coastal wildlife reserve sprinkled with 12 luxury tourist destinations along the way.
The list goes on ... and on: Leyja, Epicon, Siranna, Utamo, Norlana, Aquellum, Zardun, Xaynor, Elanan, Gidori, Treyam, Jaumur. These are all regions of Neom to "inspire, relax, create, find harmony with nature, stimulate your senses, recharge, discover, escape, transcend, adventure." It looks as though the PR team has used nearly a complete thesaurus to write the promotional content to describe the vision for Neom.
Most importantly, they forgot to include "bring us all your money," but it does seem implied.
This is direct from the Neom website regarding Aquellum, the region to be built 'encased within a mountain' along the Red Sea coast: "Aquellum will be a subterranean digitalized community of the future. Invisible from the outside, this hidden world will be driven by boundless imagination, inverting architectural principles to integrate with nature. It will seamlessly connect hotel accommodation, apartments, retail spaces, leisure and entertainment zones and innovative hubs."
The renderings of what Neom is supposed to be, or very well could be, are nothing if not amazing to look at. We'd love to see it in person when it's built. According to the Crown Prince, everything is still on track for 2039.
Source: Neom
