Long Saudi skyscraper may be the height of folly
Crown prince’s dream for $1 trillion city on stilts beset by alleged human rights abuses and ‘overspending’
A 75-MILE long desert skyscraper clad in mirrors and developed at the whim of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince will have its own high-speed railway, a sports stadium and vertical gardens where vegetables are harvested by robots.
Leaked architectural designs claim that Mirror Line, an entire city of five million people on stilts as high as the Empire State Building, will be the largest structure in the world and have to “bend” to the curvature of the Earth.
But the building may not see the light of day as Mohammed bin Salman’s futuristic Neom megacity being built on the Red Sea coast is beset by hitches as officials scramble to keep up with his wildly ambitious visions.
The Mirror Line is just one part of the $500billion (£416billion) Neom that the crown prince, who has access to a $620billion sovereign wealth fund, hopes will attract foreign investment into the kingdom to diversify its economy away from oil.
But the crown prince, 35, is reported to have ever-changing ideas for his master plan and has cycled through dozens of key staff who complain of “toxic work environments and mass overspending” with few results. Twenty-five current and former employees told Bloomberg that they struggle to implement nearimpossible plans for Neom, which is already five years into development.
Workers claim there is a culture of fear in telling the crown prince – who has locked up many of his own family – that some elements of his vision are not possible. Dozens have reportedly quit while millions of dollars are spent on architects, futurists and Hollywood production designers, according to Bloomberg.
In addition to the Neom plans, two mirrored buildings that form the Mirror Line are supposed to run parallel to each other for 75 miles and stand 1,600ft tall, housing up to five million people and costing an estimated trillion dollars.
Vertical farming will be integrated in the buildings so that residents – who will pay a subscription fee to have three meals a day – will have their vegetables “autonomously harvested and bundled” and taken into their “co-living kitchens”, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A sports stadium will sit 984ft above the ground and a high-speed train will pass underneath the buildings. Between the buildings will be a marina, where residents can dock their yachts.
Planning documents seen by The Wall Street Journal detail the grand plans of the sci-fi-esque skyscraper but also highlight the myriad issues designers are facing trying to live up to the desires of the crown prince.
The Saudi royal unveiled the concept for the Mirror Line last year, announcing that his project would be “a civilisational revolution that puts humans first”. The 105-mile “straight-line city” will be carbon zero, he announced, with no cars and no pollution. Neom, though, has faced criticism for its human rights record when in the beginning stages of construction it forcibly removed the displaced al-howeitat tribe from the area, at one point leading to a gun fight and a resident being shot dead by security forces. Foreign architects and designers have been flocking to work under the crown prince’s Vision 2030 plan, with many reported to be aware that their work will probably never be used, given the outrageous ambition of the project.
If the Mirror Line is successfully completed, it will run from the Gulf of Aqaba through a mountain range that will house the Saudi government and into the desert plains, the documents reportedly say. It is predicted to cost around $1 trillion (£833 million) and has no set completion date, but experts think it would likely take as long as 50 years. The kingdom is vastly rich and is enjoying a massive windfall revenue from high oil prices.
Not all of Saudi Arabia’s dream construction projects are completed. The planned world’s tallest skyscraper was put on hold after the last oil boom petered out.
Saudi officials did not comment on the claims about workers’ rights.