Reports have begun to emerge suggesting that Saudi Arabia is recalibrating its ambitious goals for the “megacity” Neom it is building, most notably 150 people in one giant skyscraper, dubbed “The Line.” This means that they are withdrawing their promise to provide housing for all people.
Neom is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s personal project and his comprehensive plan to move the Saudi economy away from oil dependence and expand Saudi Arabia’s cultural and political influence. It debuted in 2017 as the masterpiece of “Vision 2030.” In an interview, Bin Salman said he hopes Neom will one day compete with cities such as Miami, Florida, to host global music festivals, attract elite technology companies and scientific talent, and rethink the concept of a “walkable city.” He said he hopes so.
The largest individual development of the Neom project is this line, a skyscraper expected to be 166 miles long when completed, to accommodate the needs of an entire community, including agricultural development, stores, and other businesses, as well as a rail system that would make automobiles and other forms of personal transportation obsolete. Masu. The Line’s developers claim they originally expected 1.5 million people to live in the building, leaving the question of what kind of legal system would operate in a building supposedly controlled by the government. , the question of how people could come and go freely remained unresolved. transportation.
Line is the most high-profile of Neom’s projects, but it’s not the only one. Several other districts of the imaginary city consist of more traditional tourist attractions, such as Oxagon, an office community for high-tech startups, Troyena, a future ski resort and music festival venue, and the luxury resort island of Sindara. It is planned that However, these present significant challenges, including the inherent difficulty of building a luxury ski resort in the desert and the fact that Oxagon is expected to be built over water.
bloomberg report Construction on The Line is progressing at a much slower pace than project leaders had anticipated, and as a result, the building is expected to have a 2030 It is predicted that 300,000 people will live there by then. Not 1.5 million. Bloomberg also claimed that some front-line workers are losing their jobs due to the slow pace and growing concerns about funding mega-projects.
“Officials have said for years that they expected The Line to be built in phases and eventually cover 170 kilometers of desert along the coast. But with this withdrawal, officials expect to “We expect just 2.4 kilometers of the project to be completed by 2020,” Bloomberg claimed.
Citing unnamed sources, the outlet said the Saudi government “has not yet approved Neom’s 2024 budget”, which could put the project’s future at risk. However, he noted that Neom has had successes, including “developing more than $8 billion of projects to build so-called solar and wind farms.” green hydrogen”
Completion of Shindara is also reportedly on track to arrive on schedule, with hopes for the first tourists to arrive in 2024.
The Bloomberg report belied the absence of any public concerns about the Neom project. The report noted that the Saudi government had not publicly announced The Line’s setback and has not taken the report into account since then. Rather than showing a slowdown in development, Neom is consistently announcing new projects. The latest work, which debuts on March 20th, is a lagoon resort named “.TreyamIt is said to offer “an elevated haven to relax, rejuvenate, and enjoy the magnificent natural environment.”
Neom also expanded The company announced that it will increase its international presence in the first half of 2024, and in February it will open an office in New York to promote urban planning.
The total cost of building Neom is Be expected The amount would be about $1 trillion, The New Civil Engineer reported Monday. Much of this extraordinary amount is supported by Saudi Arabia’s oil profits. Aramco reported a profit of $121 billion in 2023, a significant amount but only the second highest on record.
New Civil Engineer notes in its report that Neom project leaders announced in a video released in February that “the first phase” of the line, but not the entire project, would be completed by 2030. did. He also said that engineers associated with the line could not be reached for comment on the Bloomberg article.
“The plans that His Royal Highness laid out in his 2030 vision statement were very clear and I think they encouraged everyone in the Kingdom,” Line Projects Chief Development Officer Dennis Hickey said in a video.
If Bloomberg’s report is accurate, it would not be the first to question the positive confidence projected by the crown prince and Neom officials. 2022, Bloomberg claimedcited “more than 25 current and former employees” and said officials were struggling to meet the crown prince’s demands.
“The project has been plagued by setbacks, according to more than 25 current and former employees interviewed for this article and 2,700 pages of internal documents,” Bloomberg said. report At the time, “Much of this stemmed from the difficulty of realizing MBS’s grand and ever-changing ideas and the difficulty of telling the prince, who had overseen the imprisonment of many of his family members, that his wishes would not be met.” was”.
Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly denied that Neom is “too ambitious”. In an interview for a special program produced by the Discovery Channel in June, the prince claimed that Neom was “very capable”.
“Neom will compete with Miami in entertainment, culture, sports and retail,” he promised, noting that the land used for the project is “vacant land.” [and] It has a diverse mix of terrain, from mountains to islands, beaches, dunes, oases, coral, skiing and diving. ”
“We have vacant land and we want space for 10 million people, so let’s start from scratch,” he offered.
In fact, the northwestern part of Saudi Arabia is home to an indigenous tribe known as the Huwaytat, who complain that the Saudi government is eradicating them from the face of the earth.
“For the Huwaytat people, Neom is built on our blood and bones,” said Huwaytat activist Alia Hayer Aboutiya Al-Huwayti Said of guardian “It’s not for people who already live there!” It’s for tourists and people with money. But not for the original people who lived there. ”
Reports that year indicated that prominent Huwaytat activists seeking to protest Riyadh’s invasion of their territory were in danger. The Saudi government killed at least one of them, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, in his home after he posted a video on YouTube accusing the government of “displacing and displacing people from their lands.”
UN human rights experts have condemned the Neom project after reports surfaced that indigenous activists have been charged with “terrorism” and are facing execution.
A letter from UN experts published in May said: “Despite being accused of terrorism, forced evictions in the name of the NEOM project and the construction of a 170-kilometre linear city called The Line… He was reportedly arrested for resisting.” “Under international law, countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty can only impose the death penalty for the “most serious crimes” involving intentional murder. I can’t.”
