In 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) announced bold plans to build an extraordinarily ambitious 26,500 square kilometer urban area called Neom on the northern tip of the Red Sea, with a budget of US$1.5 trillion.
The different regions of this sprawling urban area include a floating industrial complex, an island tourist resort, a ski resort and probably the most famous of all: The Line – a city 170km long, 200m wide and 500m high. Yes, a 170km long, 100-story skyscraper that will provide a home for nine million people in one of the most barren countries in the world. More on that later.
For comparison: The One World Trade Center in New York City – the seventh tallest building in the world – is 541 m high.
Neom is scheduled to be completed by 2039. Many experts are skeptical of the plan and recently many media outlets have reported that the project has been significantly scaled back. There is so much conflicting information circulating online that we have not been able to find a consistent extent of the rollback.
Neom
However, MBS wants to reassure the public and investors in the project that there are no setbacks and that everything is still going according to plan. This reassurance comes in the form of an initiative called “Ground X”, which was created to prove through photos and live webcams of progress on Neom that everything is still going according to plan.
Ground X reportedly has two million photos and live feeds of construction sites and project timelines for each of Neon’s zones. However, it is not open to the general public and is only available to investors and vendors. This kind of “transparency” bodes well for those putting up the money. Sad for the merely curious.
Since I’m effectively part of the “general population” and don’t have the credentials to log into Ground X, a little research led me to Giles Pendleton, Chief Operating Officer of The Line at Neom. He has a series of posts on LinkedIn titled “NEOM is real…”, with the most recent “Part 15” being published a month ago. “There’s a lot of work to be seen across NEOM as camps spring up and infrastructure excavations start to show the true scale of activity,” he says.
In an edited post from three months ago, Pendleton continued: “Latest progress video and despite the false media coverage, another record month at LINE with our excavation numbers…”
His post is accompanied by a two-minute video that’s worth a quick look, showing some of the biggest excavators and dump trucks looking like tiny ants at The Line’s massive construction site in Neom.
Neom progress video
Something like this has never been attempted on this scale. Sure, cities like New York City, Tokyo and Beijing are sprawling metropolises that one might consider miracles due to the enormous infrastructure required to run them on a daily basis, but these are traditionally built cities that have grown over decades and decades.
“The master plan for the LINE remains at 170 km, as we have always said, and we have always stressed that 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 building 170 km or a city for 9 million people at once, that’s like building New York or London in one go. That’s impossible.”
Neom
The line is intended to be a completely self-contained city, built between the walls of the 169m x 200m x 500m structure. No roads, no cars. Everything you could ever need is within a 5-minute walk in an air-conditioned area. Within the walls, high-speed rail will take you from one end to the other in just 20 minutes. Plans even include a 45,000-seat football stadium for the 2034 World Cup.
The line will be powered exclusively by solar and wind power. It will even have its own government – more democratic than the authoritarian government of Saudi Arabia – which will promote tourism and diversity.
Neom
At least that’s the plan.
Further plans for Neom include:
Trojena: a mountainous region with altitudes ranging from 1,500m to 2,600m, making it the ideal location for a huge ski resort with over 3,600 hotel rooms, an amphitheatre, and shops and restaurants. A ski resort in an arid desert seems far-fetched, but Neom promises three months of skiing at the Trojena resort every year.
Neom
Sindalah: a super-luxury resort island and yacht club on the Red Sea with world-class shopping and restaurants.
Oxagon: It looks like a strategically placed floating port, complete with factories, offices and the like, powered by 100% renewable energy.
Magna: a 120 km long coastal wildlife sanctuary home to 12 luxury tourist destinations.
The list goes on… and on: Leyja, Epicon, Siranna, Utamo, Norlana, Aquellum, Zardun, Xaynor, Elanan, Gidori, Treyam, Jaumur. These are all regions of Neom where one can “inspire, relax, create, find harmony with nature, stimulate one’s senses, recharge, explore, escape, transcend and adventure.” It looks like the PR team used almost an entire thesaurus to write the promotional content describing the vision for Neom.
Most importantly, they forgot to include “bring us all your money,” but it seems to be implied.
Neom
This comes directly from the Neom website on Aquellum, the region to be built “wrapped in a mountain” along the Red Sea coast: “Aquellum will be an underground digitized community of the future. Invisible from the outside, this hidden world will be powered by limitless imagination and invert architectural principles to integrate with nature. It will seamlessly connect hotel accommodation, apartments, retail spaces, leisure and entertainment zones, and innovation centers.”
The renderings of what Neom is or could be are simply incredible to look at. We would love to see it in person when it is finished being built. According to the Crown Prince, everything is still on schedule for 2039.
Source: Neom
