Humiliation for Saudi Arabia as it’s ‘forced to scale back $1.5trillion plans for 106-mile-long city The Line to just 1.5miles with workers already being laid off at desert construction site’

Saudi Arabia has been forced to scale back its $1.5trillion plans for a 106-mile linear desert city, according to reports, in a humiliating decision for the kingdom.

The Line – part of the country’s audacious and futuristic NEOM project – was meant to be home to around 1.5 million residents by the end of the decade.

Now, according to people familiar with the project, the development will only stretch 1.5 miles and house fewer than 300,000 residents by 2030.

As a result of the reduction to the construction of The Line, at least one contractor has started dismissing workers it employs on the site, Bloomberg reports. 

Stunning concept images released by the kingdom in 2022 showed a vast, mirrored structure cutting through the desert near crystal blue ocean waters.

It is one of several developments that form the country’s NEOM project – which also includes an industrial city, ports and tourism developments.

But The Line was the jewel in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 project, which was set in motion to diversify his country’s oil dependent economy, as well as its society and culture, and improve the image on the world stage.

The Kingdom said the project, which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion, would be an ‘unprecedented living experience’ that preserves ‘surrounding nature’.

The megacity was to feature two parallel skyscrapers extending across a swathe of desert and mountain terrain, with mirrored facades on the outside.

Saudi officials said it would be built in stages, and would eventually cover a 106-mile stretch of desert along the coast of the Red Sea in the western Tabuk province.

However, Bloomberg reports that these plans have now been dramatically scaled back – with the 106 mile structure being reduced to just 1.5 miles.

It is not clear whether it will still feature its twin skyscrapers seen in the concept imagery, or if the whole project will have to be reconsidered.

Citing its sources, the publication reports that Saudi Arabia has not yet approved NEOM’s 2024 budget, and that its vast expenditure is beginning to concern officials.

Some projects outlined in the Vision 2030 are already expected to be delayed past the end of the decade, with Finance Minister Mohammed Al Jadaan saying in December that longer is needed to ‘build factories’ and ‘sufficient human resources.’

‘The delay or rather the extension of some projects will serve the economy,’ he said.

NEOM was first announced in 2017, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman delivering a presentation on The Line in July 2022.

It has consistently raised eyebrows for proposed flourishes like flying taxis and robot maids, even as architects and economists have questioned its feasibility.

At just 200 yards wide, The Line is intended to be Saudi Arabia’s answer to unchecked and wasteful urban sprawl, layering homes, schools and parks on top of each other in what planners term ‘Zero Gravity Urbanism’.

Promotional material says residents will have ‘all daily needs’ reachable within a five-minute walk, while also having access to other perks like outdoor skiing facilities and ‘a high-speed rail with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes’.

In his presentation, Prince Mohammed sketched out an even more ambitious vision, describing a car-free utopia that would become the planet’s most liveable city.

Analysts noted at the time, though, that plans for NEOM have changed course over the years, fuelling doubts about whether The Line will ever become reality.

NEOM was once touted as a regional ‘Silicon Valley’, a biotech and digital hub spread over 10,000 square miles.

Now it’s a vehicle for reimagining urban life on a footprint of just 34 square kilometres, and addressing what Prince Mohammed describes as ‘liveability and environmental crises’.

‘The concept has morphed so much from its early conception that it’s sometimes hard to determine its direction: scaling down, scaling up, or making an aggressive turn sideways,’ said Robert Mogielnicki of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, following the presentation in 2022.

Officials had earlier said NEOM’s population would top one million, but Prince Mohammed said the number would actually hit 1.2million by 2030 before climbing to nine million by 2045.

In a promotional video released by the Kingdom, it was suggested that nine million people could live in The Line at full capacity.

The eye-popping total is part of a hoped-for nationwide population boom that Prince Mohammed said would be necessary to make Saudi Arabia – the world’s biggest crude exporter – an economic powerhouse.

The goal for 2030 is to have 50 million people – half Saudis and half foreigners – living in the kingdom, up from roughly 34 million today.

By 2040 the target is 100 million people, he said in 2022.

‘That’s the main purpose of building NEOM, to raise the capacity of Saudi Arabia, get more citizens and more people in Saudi Arabia. And since we are doing it from nothing, why should we copy normal cities?’

The site will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy and feature ‘a year-round temperate micro-climate with natural ventilation’, the promotional video said.

The feasibility of the project had long been called into question. 

Architect and urban planner Etienne Bou-Abdo said of the concept images last year: ‘the 3D images presented are not classical 3D architecture images’, and the designers of the project ‘have rather called upon video game designers’.

He stated that the plan includes ‘a lot of technology that we don’t have today’.

A number of The Line’s key features, particulary those related to energy and transport, are based on technologies that do not exist even in prototype form.