It appears that Neom—Saudi Arabia’s hugely expensive, architecturally bizarre urban development project—is floundering and close to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort.
Neom was envisioned as a vast series of fantastical urban developments spread across the coast of the Red Sea. At the center of the project is The Line—a proposed 105-mile-long city which developers had initially projected could house as many as 9 million people by the year 2030. The Line is defined by bizarre architectural flourishes that, as the story notes, have seemed impossible even to the execs tasked with making them a reality.
Are they going to properly demolish it or just fly some planes into it?
Part of the reason why Iran hates Saudi Arabia and its royalty for being predisposed to decadence just like the last shah they overthrew, in addition to the Sunni-Shia schism.
Who didn’t see this one coming?
Oh, you mean that project for which they forcefully relocated thousands of people and killed at least one?
Sure would suck if the Saudis murdered and imprisoned people and then bulldozed their homes for one of the dumbest and most expensive architectural failures in human history.
I think SAs wild architecture ideas are cool and fun but it’s the blood money, slavery, and human rights violations that bother me.
They’re also wildly terrible. The only reason any of them get built is because the government throws huge amounts of money at it and doesn’t care about the feasibility or impact.
Those are very much vanity projects, as Saudi royalty are on a epeen contest versus other Gulf emirates.
At least they’re not wasting resources and fossil fuels during a time that is critical for the planets climate. /s
It doesn’t matter.
That money was wasted lining the pockets of cronies, while everyone else still has to live in squalor.
