It turns out that Neom—Saudi Arabia’s most expensive Urban Development project for Arban—is renovating and about to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources inside the project to paint a picture of inefficiency and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort.
Neom was envisioned as a large chain of urban developments spread across the Red Sea coast. At the center of the project is the line – a proposed 105-mile city that has been developing could be as many as 9 million people by the year 2030. Another such high construction, called “chandelier,” that should be installed over the “gateway” Marina to the city:
As the Architects worked on the plans, the chandelier began to look amazing. Another recalled Tarek Qaddumi, the director in charge of the line, of the difficulty of standing a 30-story building upside down from a meter bridge. “Do you see that the earth is thrown? And those tall towers are candy,” he said. The chandelier, the architect explained, “can start moving like a pendulum”, then “pick up speed”, and finally “split”, crashing into the Marina below.
Yeah, that doesn’t sound right. Now, according to those sources The Ft spoke to, the project looks like an expensive nightmare that will never materialize:
Today, at least $50bn has been spent, deserts have been diverted, and deep trenches stretch across the globe. But Prince Mohammed, who is Nem’s teacher, has done a lot in the first phase of the programs. Neom told the FT that the line remained “very important” which would prioritize “providing a new blowerprint for humanity by changing the way people live”. But they described it as “a multi-fund development of unprecedented scale and complexity”.
The outlet spoke with staff on the project who seem to feel it’s only a matter of time before the project is declared DoA:
While Neem’s staff say much of the line may still be technically engineered, they’re not sure anyone is willing to pay for that. Construction work on the other side of Neom has slowed down, with the target area of the shies resort of the Asian winter games, one of the few places that continues to move at a fast pace … One who used to say that everyone knows that the project will not work; Now it’s just a matter of allowing the MBS down gently.
Star among the project’s problems is the fact that, since Neom’s groundbreaking development failed to materialize, it has become increasingly difficult to encourage investors to put money into the expensive project. FT Notes:
Top management kept asking for more money, but the line was competitive with other Neom projects. Some wealthy Saudi families are putting modest sums into the project, but the big investment that Riyadh is hoping to attract foreign investors has failed to materialize.
The lack of adequate funding has led a senior construction manager to say that he feels the line will never be built.
The damage to the saudis brand here could be quite severe. One of the closest places to American states in the RIGHT EAST, Saudi Arabia has lost a public reputation that is … not great. Despite America’s idealized ideals of democracy (the idea is that it wants all its partners to participate), the Saudis are still a theocratic society that makes people and even allows women to drive. The renewal of the State of Neyom clearly by showing that it is possible, if not to review its old world approach to governance and existing countries, and thus reveal its most invested industries (ai, renewable energy, electric vehicles) can flourish.
Unfortunately, instead of a metaphor for renewal and adaptation, Neom becomes a metaphor for the State’s failure to abandon the slums of the past, and its deceptions) in order to somehow transform itself into a paragon of the future. At the same time, the metaphor of the collision is made personally by thousands of workers who have difficulties, many of them, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, have died in this work. There’s just something about a mega mega project built in the desert with the blood of many workers that doesn’t speak well of modernity.
Another strategy of the Empire – which, so far, seems to be more successful than its urban development efforts – has been very important in the current AI Frenzy. The Saudis have invested heavily in data centers and have been making deals to act as an infrastructure provider in the computing boom that is happening in the west. That’s probably a surr bet (at least until the bubble pops) than a multibillion-trillion-dollar Tourist Hub.
