100-MILE-LONG CITY WITH NO CARS
Saudis’ incredible vision to turn a strip of desert into an urban oasis – and run it all on green power
it will stretch for 100 miles, be 33 times the size of new york city, be fully powered by green energy – and won’t even need any cars.
But this £150billion eco-city is not a set for a sci-fi movie – and construction is about to begin this year in Saudi Arabia.
the kingdom has unveiled lofty plans to build ‘the Line’ – home to more than a million people with claims of ‘zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions’.
it is set to be the first major construction project in the proposed controversial £400billion futuristic business hub – known as neom – along the Red Sea coast.
crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced the new city in a rare televised appearance, saying it would be 105 miles long and ‘powered by 100 per cent clean energy’.
‘Why should we sacrifice nature for the sake of development?’ he said. ‘We need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one. With zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions, you can fulfil all your daily requirements within a fiveminute walk and can travel from end to end within 20 minutes.’
transport will be underground, with trains having to travel at 330mph to meet the 20-minute vow, passing through coastal, desert and mountainous regions.
But despite all the claims to green credentials, neom will be served by a new airport, which has been registered as an official international hub and is set to be one of the biggest in the world.
the Line’s infrastructure will reportedly cost between £74billion and £148billion. construction is due to start in the first quarter of this year and, according to Saudi authorities, the city is expected to contribute £35billion to the kingdom’s gross domestic product and create 380,000 jobs.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter and neom is said to be aimed at diversifying its
economy away from fossil fuels. The first three letters of the project’s name, Neo, are derived from the Latin word for ‘new’, while the last character, ‘m’, is an abbreviation of the Arabic word ‘mostaqbal’, meaning ‘future’.
There have been few announcements regarding Neom since it was first announced by de facto ruler Prince Mohammed to much fanfare in 2017.
The project faced controversy in April last year after police shot dead one of its leading critics, Abdul-Rahim alHuwaiti, who was one of many people refusing to leave their properties to make way for the scheme.
A consultancy report leaked to The Wall Street Journal in 2019 discussed
‘Facial recognition and robot maids’
the fate of 20,000 members of the Huwaitat tribe, who have spanned Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Sinai peninsula for generations. It said that those able to develop ‘Neom-appropriate skills’ should stay, but the rest could be moved on.
The crown prince reportedly wants Neom – which will cover 10,200 square miles with plans to spread to the Jordanian border and over into Egypt – home to virtual reality industries and feature flying cars, robot maids and, more chillingly, facial recognition technology that will monitor everyone.
Boris Johnson said Neom ‘represents a greener future for us all’ in a video message recorded for the G20 Riyadh Leaders’ Summit in November.