Saudi Arabia’s $1.5 trillion megaproject, Neom City, has been called many things, a new way of living, an urban paradise, and a city of the future. However, sci-fi writer and consultant Chris Hables Gray, who contributed to The Line’s futuristic aesthetic, told Business Insider that the development is less a city and more a resort, catering only to 0.01% of the population. While the world is captivated by the impressive videos that Neom officials frequently release to entice tourists, Gray is less optimistic, calling it an ‘amazingly enticing vision of a future that will never be.’
In just a few years, The Line has already changed from a proposed 170 km stretch of mirror skyscrapers meant to house 9 million residents to a heavily downsized project, now planned to accommodate only 300,000 people by 2030. The location, planning, and strategies of The Line make it a great spot for the ultra-wealthy, but it lacks integration with the local Indigenous culture, reducing it to a planned resort rather than the revolutionary civilization it was initially claimed to be.
The urban development was supposed to have no roads, no cars, more robots than residents, high-speed rail, and more, all within twin 1,640-foot-high mirrored skyscrapers positioned 656 feet apart. Now, with the linear city scaled down from an ambitious 170 km to just 2.4 km, how much of these plans will come to fruition remains uncertain.
Neom’s Chief Operating Officer, Giles Pendleton, bluntly refutes any claims that The Line is deviating from its initial plans. ‘Despite the incorrect media reporting, it’s another record month for The Line with our excavation numbers. The project is nearing final reduced piling levels with dewatering ramping up to capacity,” he stated in his post titled ‘Neom is Real.’
