Last Updated on June 11, 2023
Drone footage reveals Saudi Arabia has begun works for its futuristic project “The Line”, first steps towards building its high-tech desert megacity Neom.
Unveiled in early 2022, The Line will be part of a larger urban project for the city of Neom (from the Greek word for “new”, neo, and the first letter of Mustaqbal, “future” in Arabic), a utopian smart city in the Arabian desert.
The Line
The “linear” city will be 218 yards (200 meters) wide, 546 yards (500 meters) high and an impressive 105 miles (170 kilometers) long, stretching approximately from the Red Sea to the city of Tabuk.
The smart city will occupy roughly only 5% of the territory of Neom, in order to preserve its natural landscape, while offering an ideal year-round climate and a high-speed underground train that will offer residents end-to-end transit in 20 minutes.
The Line will have a mirrored facade to blend in and preserve the beauty of the surrounding nature as much as possible.
No roads, cars or emissions, it will be able to rely 100 percent on renewable energy, prioritizing the health and well-being of residents. Not only that, more than 380,000 jobs are expected to be created by 2030.
Drone footage in October 2022 has confirmed that construction of The Line has actually begun, showing the initial footprint of The Line, and the main construction camp where current workers are residing.
The NEOM Project
$500 billion is the amount allocated by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Sa’ud not only for The Line, but for the whole of Neom, the futuristic city expected to be built by 2025 in the Tabuk province.
The controversial NEOM project that will see the development of ten new regions in the northwest of the country.
Together with The Line, the project includes the construction of Neom Bay and its Airport, Neom Industrial City, a Luxury resort complex named Sindalah, a Ski Village and over 16,000 acres of agricultural fields in the desert.
Neom is projected to have capacity for 450,000 people by 2026 and almost 2 million people by 2030, by 2045, it is expected to house a population of nine million.
Controversies
On November 2, 2022, the human rights organization ALQST reported that the Saudi Arabian Criminal Court sentenced three indigenous members of the Huawaitat tribe to death for opposing forced eviction.
Since work began on the utopian mega-project, Saudi authorities have allegedly arrested, harassed and persecuted other members of the tribe, which has resided in the area near the town of Tabuk for centuries, for not selling their land to the state.
Neom The Line – Photo Gallery
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