NEOM was announced as a car-free desert city, a 170-kilometre mirrored line promising a futuristic way of life. Could Saudi Arabia pull it off?
In this episode, we'll learn what happened when the world’s boldest urban plan faced up against physics, costs, and the reality of building a vertical city in the desert.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our mini-series on the making of modern Saudi Arabia.
[00:00:29] In case you missed part one, it was on Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, the Crown Prince, and the brains, vision, and force behind it all.
[00:00:38] Next up, in part three, we’ll be talking about the grisly murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
[00:00:46] But today it’s time to talk about a project that has been placed at the centre of this vision for the Saudi Arabia of the future, a city so ambitious its critics call it impossible.
[00:01:00] NEOM, a desert city of the future.
[00:01:03] So let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:08] We’ve talked before about people’s impressions about what the future might look like.
[00:01:15] If you look back at artists’ drawings of “cities of the future”, people in the 1920s imagining what a city in the 2020s might look like, you are often met with drawings of flying cars, people living in pods, their every wish met by robot butlers.
[00:01:35] The reality is that most cities of the 2020s aren’t so drastically different to how they were 100 years ago. People still get around in cars, on roads, they take buses, trams or subways.
[00:01:53] Buildings might be taller and made out of different materials, and if you go to some cities at night it might look like a science-fiction movie, with bright neon lights flashing everywhere.
[00:02:06] But urban life hasn’t had the seismic shift, the sea change, that many had predicted.
[00:02:15] However, in October of 2017, at a flashy investment conference in Riyadh, Mohammed Bin Salman announced his vision for the city of the future.
[00:02:29] And this, well, it was something very different.
[00:02:35] It was to be called NEOM, and would cover an area of 26,500 square kilometres in the northwest of the country, near the borders with Jordan and Egypt, and just across the water from Israel.
[00:02:52] It wasn’t just Saudi Arabia’s answer to Dubai, it was something much bigger: a vast, independent economic zone which would operate semi-independently to the rest of the country.
[00:03:07] This was all part of the Vision 2030 plan, the strategy of diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil. As part of this, the NEOM region would be centred around nine specialised investment sectors to, and I’m quoting directly, “drive the future of human civilisation”.
[00:03:32] It would be funded by more than $500 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
[00:03:39] Sure, a lot of money, but for a country that was at times pumping $1 billion dollars worth of oil per day, it was within the realms of possibility.
[00:03:52] Now, when NEOM was first announced, there were a lot of buzzwords.
[00:03:58] Everything was to be handled by Artificial Intelligence, 100% of the energy would come from renewable sources, it was to be a “smart city like no other”.
[00:04:10] And for the first few years, NEOM remained a concept: something people talked about at conferences or in magazines. As far as any real construction, well the area remained a vast piece of desert, with a few construction sites the only sign of what was planned out for it.
[00:04:32] Then, in January 2021, came the announcement of what would be its centrepiece: a smart city called “The Line”.
[00:04:44] And although there are some other pretty interesting bits of the wider NEOM project, I’ll be talking mostly about The Line today.
[00:04:53] Now, most cities tend to be sort of circular.
[00:04:58] There is a centre, perhaps a historic centre, and the city grows out from that.
[00:05:05] There are exceptions, of course—geographical barriers like water or mountains might prevent a city from spreading out in every direction—but most cities naturally expand from a central point.
[00:05:19] The buildings in the centre, where land is in highest demand and therefore most expensive, tend to be the tallest, and that’s where most businesses and offices tend to be. Then as you move out from the centre, those tend to be more residential areas.
[00:05:36] Again, there are many exceptions to this, but this is how cities tend to develop organically.
[00:05:44] NEOM, and The Line, proposed to take this blueprint for urban society, this model for how almost every city is set out, and turn it on its head.
[00:05:59] Instead of a circle, the city would be a straight line, 170 kilometres long.
[00:06:06] But if you are thinking of just one long road, with shops and houses on each side, no no.
[00:06:14] This line would be one, massive skyscraper, towering 500 metres up into the air.
[00:06:24] To give you a sense for quite how big that is, it’s like one and a half Eiffel Towers, taller than the very tip of the Empire State Building or the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. It’s huge.
[00:06:39] And this wasn’t just one part, it was all of it, all 170 kilometres of it.
[00:06:47] The Line would consist of two long buildings, each 500 metres high, placed opposite each other, and connected by a series of walkways, bridges.
[00:06:59] The result would be this completely unique city: 170 kilometres in length, 500 metres in height, and 200 metres in width.
[00:07:10] It would be like a massive glass wall, towering up from the desert.
[00:07:16] Its entire existence was based on the concept of something called Zero Gravity Urbanism, which is the idea that instead of extending only horizontally, cities should also extend vertically, stacked on top of each other, as if gravity had been cancelled out.
[00:07:37] This would mean that all residents would have access to every service they might need, from parks to shops to schools, as well as their place of work, all five-minutes from their home.
[00:07:51] And by doing this, you would eliminate the need for cars.
[00:07:56] Indeed, The Line would be completely car free; there wouldn’t even be a single road. There would be lifts, of course, but the only form of public transport would be a high-speed train which would run below ground.
[00:08:12] It was, at the risk of sounding cliche, a revolutionary idea.
[00:08:18] NEOM wasn't just about building a city; it was about demonstrating what an entire society, built from the ground up on futuristic principles, could achieve.
[00:08:31] And it wasn’t just an idea, a vision of some wacky architecture firm; Saudi Arabia had the cash to actually do it, or at least get started on it.
[00:08:43] Construction was already happening, and the plan was for it to eventually house 9 million residents, around a quarter of the current population of the country.
[00:08:55] It was hugely ambitious, and we will come to the issues with such ambition in a few minutes, but first we need to underline one thing.
[00:09:06] The Line, and NEOM more generally, wasn’t just another megaproject dreamed up by a committee of urban planners, or an architecture firm with eyes on a fat commission.
[00:09:20] It was, reportedly, the personal vision of Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince.
[00:09:27] The idea had come to him, according to a recent biography, in an almost Sim City-like way.
[00:09:35] He opened up Google Earth, zoomed in on Saudi Arabia, the country he knew he would one day rule.
[00:09:43] He saw this huge swathe of desert in the north west of the country.
[00:09:49] It was relatively unpopulated–only a few nomadic tribes–and not only did it have wonderful white beaches with coral reefs, but not far inland there were mountains so high that they even got snow in winter.
[00:10:05] And importantly, it was far away from the traditional centres of power in Saudi Arabia; Riyadh, the capital, and both Medina and Mecca–the two main religious sites–they were all hundreds of kilometres away.
[00:10:22] This area was a blank slate, perfect for a city that could be built from scratch without any of the baggage that might come from trying to build it elsewhere.
[00:10:34] Teams of expensive consultants were brought in to work on the projects, lured not only by the gargantuan fees that would come if they were chosen to lead the project, but also the prestige. After all, this was the most ambitious urban planning project in the world, perhaps even in human history.
[00:10:59] With extensive back and forth between groups of consultants and MBS himself the vision statement for the project was chosen:
[00:11:07] “The land of the future, where the greatest minds and best talents are empowered to embody pioneering ideas and exceed boundaries in a world inspired by imagination”.
[00:11:22] Now, there is a lot of management consultant-speak there, but it isn’t all fluff.
[00:11:28] Key to this entire project was MBS’s firm belief that NEOM, and The Line, wasn’t simply his vanity project; it was to be an attractive investment opportunity for foreigners.
[00:11:44] See, there was no shortage of foreign companies that would happily take Saudi cash, but there was a serious shortage of foreign companies who wanted to invest in Saudi Arabia, who wanted to put their money into the country.
[00:12:00] This wasn’t right, MBS thought; Saudi Arabia was the biggest country in the Middle East by land area, and was projected to have a population of almost 50 million by the year 2050. Its population was young and increasingly educated and affluent.
[00:12:21] And up until now, there had been limited ways for Saudis to spend their money in the country; many, especially rich Saudis, preferred to go abroad, leading to hundreds of billions of dollars in “economic leakage”, as MBS put it; money that was spent outside Saudi Arabia that should be spent domestically.
[00:12:46] Having an area like NEOM, which not only brought foreigners and foreign investment into Saudi Arabia but stopped Saudis from heading abroad to spend their money, well, this would help solve the problem.
[00:13:01] And NEOM and The Line did sound pretty unique.
[00:13:06] A city with no cars.
[00:13:08] A city where everything is within a five-minute walk.
[00:13:12] A city powered entirely by clean energy.
[00:13:16] A city where AI—not humans—controls basic functions like logistics, maintenance, and power distribution.
[00:13:24] A city where the climate is moderated by technology, meaning temperatures inside The Line would be cooler than the desert outside.
[00:13:34] To supporters, it was thrilling.
[00:13:37] A blank canvas on which you could rethink human civilisation from scratch.
[00:13:44] To critics, it was something else entirely—a sort of science fiction fever dream, the urban-planning equivalent of “the emperor’s new clothes”, where everyone knows something is true but is afraid to admit it, for fear of upsetting the person in charge, and certainly in this case, the person paying the bills.
[00:14:05] Because, to state the obvious, building a 170-kilometre-long, 500 metre high skyscraper in the middle of the desert is…complicated.
[00:14:17] The graphics, the videos, and the marketing materials might make it look sleek, futuristic and almost magically simple, but it is anything but.
[00:14:30] According to some engineers, much of it is physically impossible on anything like the promised scale.
[00:14:38] So, let’s start with the basics.
[00:14:41] Simply sourcing the materials for The Line is a gargantuan task. Some analysts have calculated that the demand for steel, glass and concrete would be so high it would distort the global market, inflating costs for construction projects everywhere else on Earth.
[00:15:02] The foundations alone would be one of the biggest construction challenges in human history.
[00:15:09] Then you have the environmental questions.
[00:15:13] A 170-kilometre mirrored facade in the middle of a desert—what would that do to the local environment?
[00:15:21] To the heat of the surrounding environment?
[00:15:24] To birds? It would be right in the middle of a migratory flight path, and to state the obvious, this is a little different to a small wind farm; it’s a 170 kilometre wall, stretching 500 metres up in the air.
[00:15:41] Some environmental scientists warned of mass bird deaths on a scale never seen before.
[00:15:49] Then there were the human questions.
[00:15:52] The area might look empty on Google Earth, but there were still small settlements and nomadic tribes that called it home. What would happen to them?
[00:16:02] There were temporary but no less important questions about the rights of the hundreds of thousands of migrant construction workers who would be brought in to make this project a reality. If working conditions were anything like those seen in other regional megaprojects, critics warned that the human cost of this futuristic dream could be staggeringly high.
[00:16:27] And as for the city itself, the projected population was to be nine million people.
[00:16:34] Was that in any way realistic? Would people want to live there, in a vertical, enclosed city?
[00:16:44] Urban planners pointed out that most successful cities grow organically, adapting to geography, culture, and economic demands.
[00:16:54] The Line was the opposite: an entirely artificial plan, imposed from above, with no clear historical parallel.
[00:17:04] Critics compared it to building a city inside a shopping mall.
[00:17:10] And then there were all the smaller but no-less-important questions of things like what happens in a fire?
[00:17:18] Where would the rubbish go?
[00:17:19] How would insurance work?
[00:17:21] If the fast train to the airport didn’t have baggage storage, how would people get their bags to the airport?
[00:17:28] And then, of course, there was the question of cost.
[00:17:32] The original estimate was around $500 billion.
[00:17:37] A huge amount of money, even for Saudi Arabia.
[00:17:41] But unofficial figures leaked from within the project suggested costs could reach $1 trillion, possibly even one and a half trillion dollars.
[00:17:51] Most staggeringly recent reports indicate the final cost for the full 170 kilometres of The Line alone could eventually hit $8.8 trillion.
[00:18:05] Saudi Arabia is extremely wealthy, but even for a petro state, these numbers are staggering.
[00:18:13] And then we come to the progress. For all the glossy promotional videos, drone shots, and futuristic renderings. Many analysts noticed something else: the actual construction seemed incredibly slow. Satellite imagery showed foundations being laid, structures being started, but nothing remotely close to the rapid pace promised in the early years.
[00:18:41] Meanwhile, some of those satellite images revealed that construction resources had been diverted to build a massive royal palace with 16 buildings and a golf course.
[00:18:55] In late 2023 and throughout 2024, reports began emerging that the 170 kilometre plan had quietly been scaled back.
[00:19:06] Initially the target was revised to complete around 16 kilometres by 2030 with the full 170 to be finished sometime later. But by April, 2024, even that reduced target proved too ambitious.
[00:19:26] Officials slashed the 2030 completion target from 16 kilometres down to a mere 2.4 kilometres, just 1.4% of the originally planned 170 kilometre city.
[00:19:41] The population target for 2030 was also cut dramatically from one and a half million residents down to just 300,000.
[00:19:51] And the timing for completing the full 170 kilometres? That was pushed back from 2030 all the way to 2045, another 21 years into the future.
[00:20:05] So there were all these reports that things were quietly being scaled back. And in November of 2025, there was a bombshell report by the Financial Times titled End of the Line, how Saudi Arabia's NEOM Dream Unraveled.
[00:20:24] This long report painted a picture of a hugely ambitious project that, at almost every point, came up against the laws of physics and with a sponsor that didn't take no for an answer, and with a large vested interest in keeping the project going, few people involved seemed prepared to tell the truth.
[00:20:49] MBS clearly revelled in the idea that he would be able to push through a project that so many critics said was impossible. And if he could pull it off, well, it might be expensive, but it would be transformational for the country and forever cement his legacy.
[00:21:09] But then something changed.
[00:21:13] In January of 2026, just a few weeks ago, there was the first big announcement regarding the future of NEOM. It was announced that following a year long strategic review, the project is undergoing what officials call a fundamental re-imagining. The Line is to be redesigned into something far more modest than originally planned.
[00:21:41] The focus appears to be shifting away from the futuristic, linear city concept towards something more practical: a hub for data centres to support Saudi Arabia's push into artificial intelligence.
[00:21:56] In other words, the grand vision of a car-free climate-controlled city, where 9 million people would live in a mirrored skyscraper stretching 170 kilometres through the desert is being quietly abandoned in favour of massive server farms with a view of the Red Sea.
[00:22:17] And that's not all.
[00:22:19] The Asian Winter Games, which were supposed to be held at an all new custom built NEOM ski resort in 2029 have been indefinitely postponed.
[00:22:31] Now, part of what forced this rethinking was simple economics. Oil prices have fallen significantly since NEOM was first announced.
[00:22:43] According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia needs oil at almost $100 a barrel just to balance its budget, and at $113 per barrel to fund the Crown Prince's ambitious projects.
[00:22:58] Oil is currently at around $60 a barrel, so significantly below where it needs to be, and with the country also facing major costs for hosting the 2030 World Expo and 2034 FIFA World Cup, something had to give.
[00:23:17] For Mohammed bin Salman for MBS, this represents a significant personal setback.
[00:23:24] It was his brainchild. NEOM was supposed to be the crown jewel of his Vision 2030, the project that would define his legacy and prove Saudi Arabia could build the impossible.
[00:23:39] And yet, this recent announcement was an admission that it couldn't, or at least it couldn't just yet.
[00:23:48] So to wrap things up, who knows what the future holds for this most ambitious of urban planning projects.
[00:23:56] Perhaps by 2045 when the full Line is now theoretically scheduled to be completed, some version of this dream will exist. Perhaps you'll be listening to this episode from a modest section of a futuristic linear city on the Red Sea Coast, powered by renewable energy and surrounded by data centres quietly humming away in the desert heat.
[00:24:22] Or perhaps in 20 years time, the region will be dotted with half finished foundations and rusting steel, a memorial to one of the most ambitious and most expensive follies in human history.
[00:24:36] Say what you want about NEOM, it certainly is of unparalleled ambition, but ambition, it turns out, is not enough to build a city in the sky.
[00:24:48] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on NEOM and The Line, this science fiction city of the future.
[00:24:56] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:25:00] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:25:03] If you are from Saudi Arabia, what do you think about this plan? Will some version of it come off, or do you think your country's resources would be better off spent elsewhere?
[00:25:14] And for everyone else, would you move to The Line? How would you feel about living in a 500 metre tall smart city?
[00:25:22] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:25:33] And as a final reminder, this was part two of a three-part mini-series on the making of modern Saudi Arabia. Part one was on the rise and life so far of its Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, and next up, part three is going to be on the grisly murder of the journalist Jamal Khashogi.
[00:25:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:25:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our mini-series on the making of modern Saudi Arabia.
[00:00:29] In case you missed part one, it was on Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, the Crown Prince, and the brains, vision, and force behind it all.
[00:00:38] Next up, in part three, we’ll be talking about the grisly murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
[00:00:46] But today it’s time to talk about a project that has been placed at the centre of this vision for the Saudi Arabia of the future, a city so ambitious its critics call it impossible.
[00:01:00] NEOM, a desert city of the future.
[00:01:03] So let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:08] We’ve talked before about people’s impressions about what the future might look like.
[00:01:15] If you look back at artists’ drawings of “cities of the future”, people in the 1920s imagining what a city in the 2020s might look like, you are often met with drawings of flying cars, people living in pods, their every wish met by robot butlers.
[00:01:35] The reality is that most cities of the 2020s aren’t so drastically different to how they were 100 years ago. People still get around in cars, on roads, they take buses, trams or subways.
[00:01:53] Buildings might be taller and made out of different materials, and if you go to some cities at night it might look like a science-fiction movie, with bright neon lights flashing everywhere.
[00:02:06] But urban life hasn’t had the seismic shift, the sea change, that many had predicted.
[00:02:15] However, in October of 2017, at a flashy investment conference in Riyadh, Mohammed Bin Salman announced his vision for the city of the future.
[00:02:29] And this, well, it was something very different.
[00:02:35] It was to be called NEOM, and would cover an area of 26,500 square kilometres in the northwest of the country, near the borders with Jordan and Egypt, and just across the water from Israel.
[00:02:52] It wasn’t just Saudi Arabia’s answer to Dubai, it was something much bigger: a vast, independent economic zone which would operate semi-independently to the rest of the country.
[00:03:07] This was all part of the Vision 2030 plan, the strategy of diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil. As part of this, the NEOM region would be centred around nine specialised investment sectors to, and I’m quoting directly, “drive the future of human civilisation”.
[00:03:32] It would be funded by more than $500 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
[00:03:39] Sure, a lot of money, but for a country that was at times pumping $1 billion dollars worth of oil per day, it was within the realms of possibility.
[00:03:52] Now, when NEOM was first announced, there were a lot of buzzwords.
[00:03:58] Everything was to be handled by Artificial Intelligence, 100% of the energy would come from renewable sources, it was to be a “smart city like no other”.
[00:04:10] And for the first few years, NEOM remained a concept: something people talked about at conferences or in magazines. As far as any real construction, well the area remained a vast piece of desert, with a few construction sites the only sign of what was planned out for it.
[00:04:32] Then, in January 2021, came the announcement of what would be its centrepiece: a smart city called “The Line”.
[00:04:44] And although there are some other pretty interesting bits of the wider NEOM project, I’ll be talking mostly about The Line today.
[00:04:53] Now, most cities tend to be sort of circular.
[00:04:58] There is a centre, perhaps a historic centre, and the city grows out from that.
[00:05:05] There are exceptions, of course—geographical barriers like water or mountains might prevent a city from spreading out in every direction—but most cities naturally expand from a central point.
[00:05:19] The buildings in the centre, where land is in highest demand and therefore most expensive, tend to be the tallest, and that’s where most businesses and offices tend to be. Then as you move out from the centre, those tend to be more residential areas.
[00:05:36] Again, there are many exceptions to this, but this is how cities tend to develop organically.
[00:05:44] NEOM, and The Line, proposed to take this blueprint for urban society, this model for how almost every city is set out, and turn it on its head.
[00:05:59] Instead of a circle, the city would be a straight line, 170 kilometres long.
[00:06:06] But if you are thinking of just one long road, with shops and houses on each side, no no.
[00:06:14] This line would be one, massive skyscraper, towering 500 metres up into the air.
[00:06:24] To give you a sense for quite how big that is, it’s like one and a half Eiffel Towers, taller than the very tip of the Empire State Building or the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. It’s huge.
[00:06:39] And this wasn’t just one part, it was all of it, all 170 kilometres of it.
[00:06:47] The Line would consist of two long buildings, each 500 metres high, placed opposite each other, and connected by a series of walkways, bridges.
[00:06:59] The result would be this completely unique city: 170 kilometres in length, 500 metres in height, and 200 metres in width.
[00:07:10] It would be like a massive glass wall, towering up from the desert.
[00:07:16] Its entire existence was based on the concept of something called Zero Gravity Urbanism, which is the idea that instead of extending only horizontally, cities should also extend vertically, stacked on top of each other, as if gravity had been cancelled out.
[00:07:37] This would mean that all residents would have access to every service they might need, from parks to shops to schools, as well as their place of work, all five-minutes from their home.
[00:07:51] And by doing this, you would eliminate the need for cars.
[00:07:56] Indeed, The Line would be completely car free; there wouldn’t even be a single road. There would be lifts, of course, but the only form of public transport would be a high-speed train which would run below ground.
[00:08:12] It was, at the risk of sounding cliche, a revolutionary idea.
[00:08:18] NEOM wasn't just about building a city; it was about demonstrating what an entire society, built from the ground up on futuristic principles, could achieve.
[00:08:31] And it wasn’t just an idea, a vision of some wacky architecture firm; Saudi Arabia had the cash to actually do it, or at least get started on it.
[00:08:43] Construction was already happening, and the plan was for it to eventually house 9 million residents, around a quarter of the current population of the country.
[00:08:55] It was hugely ambitious, and we will come to the issues with such ambition in a few minutes, but first we need to underline one thing.
[00:09:06] The Line, and NEOM more generally, wasn’t just another megaproject dreamed up by a committee of urban planners, or an architecture firm with eyes on a fat commission.
[00:09:20] It was, reportedly, the personal vision of Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince.
[00:09:27] The idea had come to him, according to a recent biography, in an almost Sim City-like way.
[00:09:35] He opened up Google Earth, zoomed in on Saudi Arabia, the country he knew he would one day rule.
[00:09:43] He saw this huge swathe of desert in the north west of the country.
[00:09:49] It was relatively unpopulated–only a few nomadic tribes–and not only did it have wonderful white beaches with coral reefs, but not far inland there were mountains so high that they even got snow in winter.
[00:10:05] And importantly, it was far away from the traditional centres of power in Saudi Arabia; Riyadh, the capital, and both Medina and Mecca–the two main religious sites–they were all hundreds of kilometres away.
[00:10:22] This area was a blank slate, perfect for a city that could be built from scratch without any of the baggage that might come from trying to build it elsewhere.
[00:10:34] Teams of expensive consultants were brought in to work on the projects, lured not only by the gargantuan fees that would come if they were chosen to lead the project, but also the prestige. After all, this was the most ambitious urban planning project in the world, perhaps even in human history.
[00:10:59] With extensive back and forth between groups of consultants and MBS himself the vision statement for the project was chosen:
[00:11:07] “The land of the future, where the greatest minds and best talents are empowered to embody pioneering ideas and exceed boundaries in a world inspired by imagination”.
[00:11:22] Now, there is a lot of management consultant-speak there, but it isn’t all fluff.
[00:11:28] Key to this entire project was MBS’s firm belief that NEOM, and The Line, wasn’t simply his vanity project; it was to be an attractive investment opportunity for foreigners.
[00:11:44] See, there was no shortage of foreign companies that would happily take Saudi cash, but there was a serious shortage of foreign companies who wanted to invest in Saudi Arabia, who wanted to put their money into the country.
[00:12:00] This wasn’t right, MBS thought; Saudi Arabia was the biggest country in the Middle East by land area, and was projected to have a population of almost 50 million by the year 2050. Its population was young and increasingly educated and affluent.
[00:12:21] And up until now, there had been limited ways for Saudis to spend their money in the country; many, especially rich Saudis, preferred to go abroad, leading to hundreds of billions of dollars in “economic leakage”, as MBS put it; money that was spent outside Saudi Arabia that should be spent domestically.
[00:12:46] Having an area like NEOM, which not only brought foreigners and foreign investment into Saudi Arabia but stopped Saudis from heading abroad to spend their money, well, this would help solve the problem.
[00:13:01] And NEOM and The Line did sound pretty unique.
[00:13:06] A city with no cars.
[00:13:08] A city where everything is within a five-minute walk.
[00:13:12] A city powered entirely by clean energy.
[00:13:16] A city where AI—not humans—controls basic functions like logistics, maintenance, and power distribution.
[00:13:24] A city where the climate is moderated by technology, meaning temperatures inside The Line would be cooler than the desert outside.
[00:13:34] To supporters, it was thrilling.
[00:13:37] A blank canvas on which you could rethink human civilisation from scratch.
[00:13:44] To critics, it was something else entirely—a sort of science fiction fever dream, the urban-planning equivalent of “the emperor’s new clothes”, where everyone knows something is true but is afraid to admit it, for fear of upsetting the person in charge, and certainly in this case, the person paying the bills.
[00:14:05] Because, to state the obvious, building a 170-kilometre-long, 500 metre high skyscraper in the middle of the desert is…complicated.
[00:14:17] The graphics, the videos, and the marketing materials might make it look sleek, futuristic and almost magically simple, but it is anything but.
[00:14:30] According to some engineers, much of it is physically impossible on anything like the promised scale.
[00:14:38] So, let’s start with the basics.
[00:14:41] Simply sourcing the materials for The Line is a gargantuan task. Some analysts have calculated that the demand for steel, glass and concrete would be so high it would distort the global market, inflating costs for construction projects everywhere else on Earth.
[00:15:02] The foundations alone would be one of the biggest construction challenges in human history.
[00:15:09] Then you have the environmental questions.
[00:15:13] A 170-kilometre mirrored facade in the middle of a desert—what would that do to the local environment?
[00:15:21] To the heat of the surrounding environment?
[00:15:24] To birds? It would be right in the middle of a migratory flight path, and to state the obvious, this is a little different to a small wind farm; it’s a 170 kilometre wall, stretching 500 metres up in the air.
[00:15:41] Some environmental scientists warned of mass bird deaths on a scale never seen before.
[00:15:49] Then there were the human questions.
[00:15:52] The area might look empty on Google Earth, but there were still small settlements and nomadic tribes that called it home. What would happen to them?
[00:16:02] There were temporary but no less important questions about the rights of the hundreds of thousands of migrant construction workers who would be brought in to make this project a reality. If working conditions were anything like those seen in other regional megaprojects, critics warned that the human cost of this futuristic dream could be staggeringly high.
[00:16:27] And as for the city itself, the projected population was to be nine million people.
[00:16:34] Was that in any way realistic? Would people want to live there, in a vertical, enclosed city?
[00:16:44] Urban planners pointed out that most successful cities grow organically, adapting to geography, culture, and economic demands.
[00:16:54] The Line was the opposite: an entirely artificial plan, imposed from above, with no clear historical parallel.
[00:17:04] Critics compared it to building a city inside a shopping mall.
[00:17:10] And then there were all the smaller but no-less-important questions of things like what happens in a fire?
[00:17:18] Where would the rubbish go?
[00:17:19] How would insurance work?
[00:17:21] If the fast train to the airport didn’t have baggage storage, how would people get their bags to the airport?
[00:17:28] And then, of course, there was the question of cost.
[00:17:32] The original estimate was around $500 billion.
[00:17:37] A huge amount of money, even for Saudi Arabia.
[00:17:41] But unofficial figures leaked from within the project suggested costs could reach $1 trillion, possibly even one and a half trillion dollars.
[00:17:51] Most staggeringly recent reports indicate the final cost for the full 170 kilometres of The Line alone could eventually hit $8.8 trillion.
[00:18:05] Saudi Arabia is extremely wealthy, but even for a petro state, these numbers are staggering.
[00:18:13] And then we come to the progress. For all the glossy promotional videos, drone shots, and futuristic renderings. Many analysts noticed something else: the actual construction seemed incredibly slow. Satellite imagery showed foundations being laid, structures being started, but nothing remotely close to the rapid pace promised in the early years.
[00:18:41] Meanwhile, some of those satellite images revealed that construction resources had been diverted to build a massive royal palace with 16 buildings and a golf course.
[00:18:55] In late 2023 and throughout 2024, reports began emerging that the 170 kilometre plan had quietly been scaled back.
[00:19:06] Initially the target was revised to complete around 16 kilometres by 2030 with the full 170 to be finished sometime later. But by April, 2024, even that reduced target proved too ambitious.
[00:19:26] Officials slashed the 2030 completion target from 16 kilometres down to a mere 2.4 kilometres, just 1.4% of the originally planned 170 kilometre city.
[00:19:41] The population target for 2030 was also cut dramatically from one and a half million residents down to just 300,000.
[00:19:51] And the timing for completing the full 170 kilometres? That was pushed back from 2030 all the way to 2045, another 21 years into the future.
[00:20:05] So there were all these reports that things were quietly being scaled back. And in November of 2025, there was a bombshell report by the Financial Times titled End of the Line, how Saudi Arabia's NEOM Dream Unraveled.
[00:20:24] This long report painted a picture of a hugely ambitious project that, at almost every point, came up against the laws of physics and with a sponsor that didn't take no for an answer, and with a large vested interest in keeping the project going, few people involved seemed prepared to tell the truth.
[00:20:49] MBS clearly revelled in the idea that he would be able to push through a project that so many critics said was impossible. And if he could pull it off, well, it might be expensive, but it would be transformational for the country and forever cement his legacy.
[00:21:09] But then something changed.
[00:21:13] In January of 2026, just a few weeks ago, there was the first big announcement regarding the future of NEOM. It was announced that following a year long strategic review, the project is undergoing what officials call a fundamental re-imagining. The Line is to be redesigned into something far more modest than originally planned.
[00:21:41] The focus appears to be shifting away from the futuristic, linear city concept towards something more practical: a hub for data centres to support Saudi Arabia's push into artificial intelligence.
[00:21:56] In other words, the grand vision of a car-free climate-controlled city, where 9 million people would live in a mirrored skyscraper stretching 170 kilometres through the desert is being quietly abandoned in favour of massive server farms with a view of the Red Sea.
[00:22:17] And that's not all.
[00:22:19] The Asian Winter Games, which were supposed to be held at an all new custom built NEOM ski resort in 2029 have been indefinitely postponed.
[00:22:31] Now, part of what forced this rethinking was simple economics. Oil prices have fallen significantly since NEOM was first announced.
[00:22:43] According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia needs oil at almost $100 a barrel just to balance its budget, and at $113 per barrel to fund the Crown Prince's ambitious projects.
[00:22:58] Oil is currently at around $60 a barrel, so significantly below where it needs to be, and with the country also facing major costs for hosting the 2030 World Expo and 2034 FIFA World Cup, something had to give.
[00:23:17] For Mohammed bin Salman for MBS, this represents a significant personal setback.
[00:23:24] It was his brainchild. NEOM was supposed to be the crown jewel of his Vision 2030, the project that would define his legacy and prove Saudi Arabia could build the impossible.
[00:23:39] And yet, this recent announcement was an admission that it couldn't, or at least it couldn't just yet.
[00:23:48] So to wrap things up, who knows what the future holds for this most ambitious of urban planning projects.
[00:23:56] Perhaps by 2045 when the full Line is now theoretically scheduled to be completed, some version of this dream will exist. Perhaps you'll be listening to this episode from a modest section of a futuristic linear city on the Red Sea Coast, powered by renewable energy and surrounded by data centres quietly humming away in the desert heat.
[00:24:22] Or perhaps in 20 years time, the region will be dotted with half finished foundations and rusting steel, a memorial to one of the most ambitious and most expensive follies in human history.
[00:24:36] Say what you want about NEOM, it certainly is of unparalleled ambition, but ambition, it turns out, is not enough to build a city in the sky.
[00:24:48] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on NEOM and The Line, this science fiction city of the future.
[00:24:56] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:25:00] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:25:03] If you are from Saudi Arabia, what do you think about this plan? Will some version of it come off, or do you think your country's resources would be better off spent elsewhere?
[00:25:14] And for everyone else, would you move to The Line? How would you feel about living in a 500 metre tall smart city?
[00:25:22] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:25:33] And as a final reminder, this was part two of a three-part mini-series on the making of modern Saudi Arabia. Part one was on the rise and life so far of its Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, and next up, part three is going to be on the grisly murder of the journalist Jamal Khashogi.
[00:25:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:25:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our mini-series on the making of modern Saudi Arabia.
[00:00:29] In case you missed part one, it was on Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, the Crown Prince, and the brains, vision, and force behind it all.
[00:00:38] Next up, in part three, we’ll be talking about the grisly murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
[00:00:46] But today it’s time to talk about a project that has been placed at the centre of this vision for the Saudi Arabia of the future, a city so ambitious its critics call it impossible.
[00:01:00] NEOM, a desert city of the future.
[00:01:03] So let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:08] We’ve talked before about people’s impressions about what the future might look like.
[00:01:15] If you look back at artists’ drawings of “cities of the future”, people in the 1920s imagining what a city in the 2020s might look like, you are often met with drawings of flying cars, people living in pods, their every wish met by robot butlers.
[00:01:35] The reality is that most cities of the 2020s aren’t so drastically different to how they were 100 years ago. People still get around in cars, on roads, they take buses, trams or subways.
[00:01:53] Buildings might be taller and made out of different materials, and if you go to some cities at night it might look like a science-fiction movie, with bright neon lights flashing everywhere.
[00:02:06] But urban life hasn’t had the seismic shift, the sea change, that many had predicted.
[00:02:15] However, in October of 2017, at a flashy investment conference in Riyadh, Mohammed Bin Salman announced his vision for the city of the future.
[00:02:29] And this, well, it was something very different.
[00:02:35] It was to be called NEOM, and would cover an area of 26,500 square kilometres in the northwest of the country, near the borders with Jordan and Egypt, and just across the water from Israel.
[00:02:52] It wasn’t just Saudi Arabia’s answer to Dubai, it was something much bigger: a vast, independent economic zone which would operate semi-independently to the rest of the country.
[00:03:07] This was all part of the Vision 2030 plan, the strategy of diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil. As part of this, the NEOM region would be centred around nine specialised investment sectors to, and I’m quoting directly, “drive the future of human civilisation”.
[00:03:32] It would be funded by more than $500 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
[00:03:39] Sure, a lot of money, but for a country that was at times pumping $1 billion dollars worth of oil per day, it was within the realms of possibility.
[00:03:52] Now, when NEOM was first announced, there were a lot of buzzwords.
[00:03:58] Everything was to be handled by Artificial Intelligence, 100% of the energy would come from renewable sources, it was to be a “smart city like no other”.
[00:04:10] And for the first few years, NEOM remained a concept: something people talked about at conferences or in magazines. As far as any real construction, well the area remained a vast piece of desert, with a few construction sites the only sign of what was planned out for it.
[00:04:32] Then, in January 2021, came the announcement of what would be its centrepiece: a smart city called “The Line”.
[00:04:44] And although there are some other pretty interesting bits of the wider NEOM project, I’ll be talking mostly about The Line today.
[00:04:53] Now, most cities tend to be sort of circular.
[00:04:58] There is a centre, perhaps a historic centre, and the city grows out from that.
[00:05:05] There are exceptions, of course—geographical barriers like water or mountains might prevent a city from spreading out in every direction—but most cities naturally expand from a central point.
[00:05:19] The buildings in the centre, where land is in highest demand and therefore most expensive, tend to be the tallest, and that’s where most businesses and offices tend to be. Then as you move out from the centre, those tend to be more residential areas.
[00:05:36] Again, there are many exceptions to this, but this is how cities tend to develop organically.
[00:05:44] NEOM, and The Line, proposed to take this blueprint for urban society, this model for how almost every city is set out, and turn it on its head.
[00:05:59] Instead of a circle, the city would be a straight line, 170 kilometres long.
[00:06:06] But if you are thinking of just one long road, with shops and houses on each side, no no.
[00:06:14] This line would be one, massive skyscraper, towering 500 metres up into the air.
[00:06:24] To give you a sense for quite how big that is, it’s like one and a half Eiffel Towers, taller than the very tip of the Empire State Building or the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. It’s huge.
[00:06:39] And this wasn’t just one part, it was all of it, all 170 kilometres of it.
[00:06:47] The Line would consist of two long buildings, each 500 metres high, placed opposite each other, and connected by a series of walkways, bridges.
[00:06:59] The result would be this completely unique city: 170 kilometres in length, 500 metres in height, and 200 metres in width.
[00:07:10] It would be like a massive glass wall, towering up from the desert.
[00:07:16] Its entire existence was based on the concept of something called Zero Gravity Urbanism, which is the idea that instead of extending only horizontally, cities should also extend vertically, stacked on top of each other, as if gravity had been cancelled out.
[00:07:37] This would mean that all residents would have access to every service they might need, from parks to shops to schools, as well as their place of work, all five-minutes from their home.
[00:07:51] And by doing this, you would eliminate the need for cars.
[00:07:56] Indeed, The Line would be completely car free; there wouldn’t even be a single road. There would be lifts, of course, but the only form of public transport would be a high-speed train which would run below ground.
[00:08:12] It was, at the risk of sounding cliche, a revolutionary idea.
[00:08:18] NEOM wasn't just about building a city; it was about demonstrating what an entire society, built from the ground up on futuristic principles, could achieve.
[00:08:31] And it wasn’t just an idea, a vision of some wacky architecture firm; Saudi Arabia had the cash to actually do it, or at least get started on it.
[00:08:43] Construction was already happening, and the plan was for it to eventually house 9 million residents, around a quarter of the current population of the country.
[00:08:55] It was hugely ambitious, and we will come to the issues with such ambition in a few minutes, but first we need to underline one thing.
[00:09:06] The Line, and NEOM more generally, wasn’t just another megaproject dreamed up by a committee of urban planners, or an architecture firm with eyes on a fat commission.
[00:09:20] It was, reportedly, the personal vision of Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince.
[00:09:27] The idea had come to him, according to a recent biography, in an almost Sim City-like way.
[00:09:35] He opened up Google Earth, zoomed in on Saudi Arabia, the country he knew he would one day rule.
[00:09:43] He saw this huge swathe of desert in the north west of the country.
[00:09:49] It was relatively unpopulated–only a few nomadic tribes–and not only did it have wonderful white beaches with coral reefs, but not far inland there were mountains so high that they even got snow in winter.
[00:10:05] And importantly, it was far away from the traditional centres of power in Saudi Arabia; Riyadh, the capital, and both Medina and Mecca–the two main religious sites–they were all hundreds of kilometres away.
[00:10:22] This area was a blank slate, perfect for a city that could be built from scratch without any of the baggage that might come from trying to build it elsewhere.
[00:10:34] Teams of expensive consultants were brought in to work on the projects, lured not only by the gargantuan fees that would come if they were chosen to lead the project, but also the prestige. After all, this was the most ambitious urban planning project in the world, perhaps even in human history.
[00:10:59] With extensive back and forth between groups of consultants and MBS himself the vision statement for the project was chosen:
[00:11:07] “The land of the future, where the greatest minds and best talents are empowered to embody pioneering ideas and exceed boundaries in a world inspired by imagination”.
[00:11:22] Now, there is a lot of management consultant-speak there, but it isn’t all fluff.
[00:11:28] Key to this entire project was MBS’s firm belief that NEOM, and The Line, wasn’t simply his vanity project; it was to be an attractive investment opportunity for foreigners.
[00:11:44] See, there was no shortage of foreign companies that would happily take Saudi cash, but there was a serious shortage of foreign companies who wanted to invest in Saudi Arabia, who wanted to put their money into the country.
[00:12:00] This wasn’t right, MBS thought; Saudi Arabia was the biggest country in the Middle East by land area, and was projected to have a population of almost 50 million by the year 2050. Its population was young and increasingly educated and affluent.
[00:12:21] And up until now, there had been limited ways for Saudis to spend their money in the country; many, especially rich Saudis, preferred to go abroad, leading to hundreds of billions of dollars in “economic leakage”, as MBS put it; money that was spent outside Saudi Arabia that should be spent domestically.
[00:12:46] Having an area like NEOM, which not only brought foreigners and foreign investment into Saudi Arabia but stopped Saudis from heading abroad to spend their money, well, this would help solve the problem.
[00:13:01] And NEOM and The Line did sound pretty unique.
[00:13:06] A city with no cars.
[00:13:08] A city where everything is within a five-minute walk.
[00:13:12] A city powered entirely by clean energy.
[00:13:16] A city where AI—not humans—controls basic functions like logistics, maintenance, and power distribution.
[00:13:24] A city where the climate is moderated by technology, meaning temperatures inside The Line would be cooler than the desert outside.
[00:13:34] To supporters, it was thrilling.
[00:13:37] A blank canvas on which you could rethink human civilisation from scratch.
[00:13:44] To critics, it was something else entirely—a sort of science fiction fever dream, the urban-planning equivalent of “the emperor’s new clothes”, where everyone knows something is true but is afraid to admit it, for fear of upsetting the person in charge, and certainly in this case, the person paying the bills.
[00:14:05] Because, to state the obvious, building a 170-kilometre-long, 500 metre high skyscraper in the middle of the desert is…complicated.
[00:14:17] The graphics, the videos, and the marketing materials might make it look sleek, futuristic and almost magically simple, but it is anything but.
[00:14:30] According to some engineers, much of it is physically impossible on anything like the promised scale.
[00:14:38] So, let’s start with the basics.
[00:14:41] Simply sourcing the materials for The Line is a gargantuan task. Some analysts have calculated that the demand for steel, glass and concrete would be so high it would distort the global market, inflating costs for construction projects everywhere else on Earth.
[00:15:02] The foundations alone would be one of the biggest construction challenges in human history.
[00:15:09] Then you have the environmental questions.
[00:15:13] A 170-kilometre mirrored facade in the middle of a desert—what would that do to the local environment?
[00:15:21] To the heat of the surrounding environment?
[00:15:24] To birds? It would be right in the middle of a migratory flight path, and to state the obvious, this is a little different to a small wind farm; it’s a 170 kilometre wall, stretching 500 metres up in the air.
[00:15:41] Some environmental scientists warned of mass bird deaths on a scale never seen before.
[00:15:49] Then there were the human questions.
[00:15:52] The area might look empty on Google Earth, but there were still small settlements and nomadic tribes that called it home. What would happen to them?
[00:16:02] There were temporary but no less important questions about the rights of the hundreds of thousands of migrant construction workers who would be brought in to make this project a reality. If working conditions were anything like those seen in other regional megaprojects, critics warned that the human cost of this futuristic dream could be staggeringly high.
[00:16:27] And as for the city itself, the projected population was to be nine million people.
[00:16:34] Was that in any way realistic? Would people want to live there, in a vertical, enclosed city?
[00:16:44] Urban planners pointed out that most successful cities grow organically, adapting to geography, culture, and economic demands.
[00:16:54] The Line was the opposite: an entirely artificial plan, imposed from above, with no clear historical parallel.
[00:17:04] Critics compared it to building a city inside a shopping mall.
[00:17:10] And then there were all the smaller but no-less-important questions of things like what happens in a fire?
[00:17:18] Where would the rubbish go?
[00:17:19] How would insurance work?
[00:17:21] If the fast train to the airport didn’t have baggage storage, how would people get their bags to the airport?
[00:17:28] And then, of course, there was the question of cost.
[00:17:32] The original estimate was around $500 billion.
[00:17:37] A huge amount of money, even for Saudi Arabia.
[00:17:41] But unofficial figures leaked from within the project suggested costs could reach $1 trillion, possibly even one and a half trillion dollars.
[00:17:51] Most staggeringly recent reports indicate the final cost for the full 170 kilometres of The Line alone could eventually hit $8.8 trillion.
[00:18:05] Saudi Arabia is extremely wealthy, but even for a petro state, these numbers are staggering.
[00:18:13] And then we come to the progress. For all the glossy promotional videos, drone shots, and futuristic renderings. Many analysts noticed something else: the actual construction seemed incredibly slow. Satellite imagery showed foundations being laid, structures being started, but nothing remotely close to the rapid pace promised in the early years.
[00:18:41] Meanwhile, some of those satellite images revealed that construction resources had been diverted to build a massive royal palace with 16 buildings and a golf course.
[00:18:55] In late 2023 and throughout 2024, reports began emerging that the 170 kilometre plan had quietly been scaled back.
[00:19:06] Initially the target was revised to complete around 16 kilometres by 2030 with the full 170 to be finished sometime later. But by April, 2024, even that reduced target proved too ambitious.
[00:19:26] Officials slashed the 2030 completion target from 16 kilometres down to a mere 2.4 kilometres, just 1.4% of the originally planned 170 kilometre city.
[00:19:41] The population target for 2030 was also cut dramatically from one and a half million residents down to just 300,000.
[00:19:51] And the timing for completing the full 170 kilometres? That was pushed back from 2030 all the way to 2045, another 21 years into the future.
[00:20:05] So there were all these reports that things were quietly being scaled back. And in November of 2025, there was a bombshell report by the Financial Times titled End of the Line, how Saudi Arabia's NEOM Dream Unraveled.
[00:20:24] This long report painted a picture of a hugely ambitious project that, at almost every point, came up against the laws of physics and with a sponsor that didn't take no for an answer, and with a large vested interest in keeping the project going, few people involved seemed prepared to tell the truth.
[00:20:49] MBS clearly revelled in the idea that he would be able to push through a project that so many critics said was impossible. And if he could pull it off, well, it might be expensive, but it would be transformational for the country and forever cement his legacy.
[00:21:09] But then something changed.
[00:21:13] In January of 2026, just a few weeks ago, there was the first big announcement regarding the future of NEOM. It was announced that following a year long strategic review, the project is undergoing what officials call a fundamental re-imagining. The Line is to be redesigned into something far more modest than originally planned.
[00:21:41] The focus appears to be shifting away from the futuristic, linear city concept towards something more practical: a hub for data centres to support Saudi Arabia's push into artificial intelligence.
[00:21:56] In other words, the grand vision of a car-free climate-controlled city, where 9 million people would live in a mirrored skyscraper stretching 170 kilometres through the desert is being quietly abandoned in favour of massive server farms with a view of the Red Sea.
[00:22:17] And that's not all.
[00:22:19] The Asian Winter Games, which were supposed to be held at an all new custom built NEOM ski resort in 2029 have been indefinitely postponed.
[00:22:31] Now, part of what forced this rethinking was simple economics. Oil prices have fallen significantly since NEOM was first announced.
[00:22:43] According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia needs oil at almost $100 a barrel just to balance its budget, and at $113 per barrel to fund the Crown Prince's ambitious projects.
[00:22:58] Oil is currently at around $60 a barrel, so significantly below where it needs to be, and with the country also facing major costs for hosting the 2030 World Expo and 2034 FIFA World Cup, something had to give.
[00:23:17] For Mohammed bin Salman for MBS, this represents a significant personal setback.
[00:23:24] It was his brainchild. NEOM was supposed to be the crown jewel of his Vision 2030, the project that would define his legacy and prove Saudi Arabia could build the impossible.
[00:23:39] And yet, this recent announcement was an admission that it couldn't, or at least it couldn't just yet.
[00:23:48] So to wrap things up, who knows what the future holds for this most ambitious of urban planning projects.
[00:23:56] Perhaps by 2045 when the full Line is now theoretically scheduled to be completed, some version of this dream will exist. Perhaps you'll be listening to this episode from a modest section of a futuristic linear city on the Red Sea Coast, powered by renewable energy and surrounded by data centres quietly humming away in the desert heat.
[00:24:22] Or perhaps in 20 years time, the region will be dotted with half finished foundations and rusting steel, a memorial to one of the most ambitious and most expensive follies in human history.
[00:24:36] Say what you want about NEOM, it certainly is of unparalleled ambition, but ambition, it turns out, is not enough to build a city in the sky.
[00:24:48] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on NEOM and The Line, this science fiction city of the future.
[00:24:56] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:25:00] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:25:03] If you are from Saudi Arabia, what do you think about this plan? Will some version of it come off, or do you think your country's resources would be better off spent elsewhere?
[00:25:14] And for everyone else, would you move to The Line? How would you feel about living in a 500 metre tall smart city?
[00:25:22] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:25:33] And as a final reminder, this was part two of a three-part mini-series on the making of modern Saudi Arabia. Part one was on the rise and life so far of its Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, and next up, part three is going to be on the grisly murder of the journalist Jamal Khashogi.
[00:25:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:25:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
