Futuristic project has courted controversy from the beginning
By Heather Allen
How would you like to live in this stunning new residence, which when it’s completed will be over 170 kilometres long, 200 metres wide, and taller than the Empire State Building?
Boasting extensive views of the Red Sea, this sci-fi utopia is The Line, currently being built in the Tabuk province of north-western Saudi Arabia, and it’s apparently going to be a ‘model for nature preservation and enhanced human livability’. Don’t fancy it? But it’s going to be carbon neutral! There will be no cars to pollute and endanger, and everything you could ever need will be within a five-minute walk. You can even look forward to robot maids and flying taxis, if the rumours are true. You sure you wouldn’t fancy it? No?
That’s a shame, because The Line is Saudi Arabia’s ‘linear city of the future’ and is expected to accommodate nine million people when it’s finished. That would not include anyone from my household, however. A quick straw poll of my nearest and dearest led to mutters of ‘eyesore’ and wrinkled noses. But British families used to British architecture are not the targets for this planned development, which is just as well. No, it’s aimed at the ‘cosmopolitan elite’, if the blurb is to be believed.
The designs were launched last week by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler, Mohammad bin Salman, a year and a half after the initial plans for the development were announced, live on Saudi TV, in January 2021. The megacity will consist of two parallel structures stretching over 170km (105 miles) running partly along the coastline of the Red Sea. These skyscrapers will be 500m (1,640ft) tall, and the complex will be a mere 200m (656ft) wide by comparison. Sitting on the edge of one of the world’s most prominent shipping lanes, the entire city will cover an area of just 13 square miles – roughly equivalent to the area covered by the combined districts of Westminster, Chelsea and Kensington in London.
According to a hi-tech promotional video that would rival the best efforts of George Lucas and Industrial Light & Magic, The Line will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy and feature ‘a year-round temperate micro-climate with natural ventilation’. Its residents will not be able to have cars, as there will be no roads to drive them on, or indeed, car parks to park them in. This won’t matter though, according to the architects, because all supermarkets and essential services will be ‘a five-minute walk’ away, either up, down or across the city. Multiple communities will be housed within the glass façade, and residents will be able to ‘organically’ bump into each other as they go about their lives. The Line will also have an underground high-speed train that will allow citizens to go from one end of the city to the other in under 20 minutes, and will maintain an ‘ideal’ climate all year round because of its mix of shade, sunlight and ventilation. Underground tunnels will also be used for deliveries and utilities, so there won’t be pesky, smelly lorries messing things up. It is also rumoured that The Line will have an artificial moon, robot maids and flying taxis – presumably solar powered.
In case your sci-fi senses are tingling at the word ‘megacity’ commonly used in reference to this project, then like me you are probably thinking of Mega-City One, a fictional city which features in the 2000AD and Judge Dredd franchises. Mega-City One is a fictional post-nuclear megalopolis covering much of the Eastern United States and some of Canada. It is formed of colossal city blocks, each one of which is a town in itself. Each block possesses a hospital, gymnasium, school, and shopping district. A citizen can live their whole lives without leaving their block. The parallels are obviously unintentional, and will doubtless end there and not progress to the fate of the fictional Mega-City One, which, as fans will know, was not a happy one.
Saudi projections state that 1.5 million people will live in The Line by 2030 – in just eight years’ time. The Line will cost approximately £262bn to build, a chunk of which will be funded by the Crown Prince himself, as well as the Saudi government, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and local and international investors. The project is expected to create 380,000 jobs.
The Line is part of the NEOM city project, an £830bn initiative owned by Saudi Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. The project is headed by the Crown Prince and launched by HRH in October 2017, just four months after his tenure began. NEOM is expected to harness solar and wind energy, and sources say that it will also house the world’s largest green hydrogen plant. Among other initiatives, the project will include a manufacturing and innovation city, called Oxagon, and, incredibly, an outdoor skiing destination in the Arabian Gulf. NEOM is part of Saudi Vision 2030, the stated aims of which are to diversify the country’s economy (not least by attracting more visitors) and to reduce its dependence on oil. The entire NEOM project area extends to the Aqaba Gulf, and includes 468km of coastline with beaches and coral reefs, as well as mountains up to 2,500 metres high. Analysts at The Washington Post have stated that the entire project will be built in phases, and will be completed around 2050: another 28 years.
No firm details have yet been released concerning the environmental impact of the construction. However, the project’s leaders have said that they plan to use digital designs and industrial-scale construction to speed up the building of The Line, and are keen to flag up how they are offsetting the environmental impact. One such initiative is NEOM’s project to plant 100 million native trees, shrubs and grasses by 2030, which they say will aid the restoration of degraded land and the repair of wildlife habitats, and will form part of NEOM’s program to rehabilitate 1.5 million hectares of land. The outer mirror façade of The Line is meant to allow the construction to blend into its environment – because a pair of parallel 170km long, 500-metre-tall mirrors are exactly what you expect to find in the desert, are they not? Concept designs include integrated vertical farming, a yacht marina (of course), and a sports stadium built 305m (1000ft) above ground.
Announcing the designs for The Line, the Crown Prince said: “The designs revealed today for the city’s vertically layered communities will challenge the traditional flat, horizontal cities and create a model for nature preservation and enhanced human livability. The Line will tackle the challenges facing humanity in urban life today and will shine a light on alternative ways to live.” According to the Crown Prince, the project is, “a civilisational revolution that puts humans first, providing an unprecedented urban living experience while preserving the surrounding nature.”
Before you start to wonder why the British Royal Family aren’t putting their hands in their pockets to build such a fantastic project for the good of the people, remember, this is Saudi Arabia we’re talking about. As you would expect, it’s not so simple as all that, nor as benign.
To start with, some experts are sceptical about whether The Line can or should be built at all. Torbjorn Soltvedt, Principal Analyst, Middle East and North Africa, at global risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said: “The feasibility of Neom as a whole is still unclear given the unprecedented scale and cost of the project.” This scepticism was echoed by Carlosfelipe Pardo, Senior Adviser to the New Urban Mobility Alliance, who voiced his concerns to news outlet NPR about the idea of building new cities from scratch, rather than aiming to solve the problems in existing developments. Pardo points out that the idea of solving urban problems by creating a city from scratch isn’t new, as it has been tried before, from Brasília and India’s Chandigarh to Malaysia’s Putrajaya. “This solution is a little bit like wanting to live on Mars because things on Earth are very messy,” he said. Despite starting with a clean slate, such elaborate urban plans have usually “created new urban settings where problems have also arisen,” Pardo points out. While he grants that the approach can tackle typical city challenges head-on, Pardo says that it will not help people already living with problems elsewhere, and is concerned that The Line’s high-tech approach ignores people’s desire to simply go outside, to experience something in a city that isn’t man-made. “This seems impossible, greatly limited or just plain artificial,” he said – a sentiment which partly explains the negative gut reaction to developments such as this among nature-loving people. He does, however, ring a note of hope, albeit a faint one: “I’m sure several characteristics of this design could be integrated into existing cities, and it would be great to have a way of doing so.” Benefits? Maybe. But the story doesn’t end there.
More concerning than the merely practical is how the rhetoric of ‘enhanced human livability’ clashes with the hard truths of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. From the beginning, the project was beset by controversy, because 20,000 people will be forced to relocate as a result of its construction. These residents are members of the Huwaiti tribe, who have lived in the Tabuk province for centuries and who can trace their lineage to before the founding of Saudi Arabia itself. However, none of the official statements regarding the project have even acknowledged the existence of the tribespeople. Certainly, there is no evidence of any attempt to rehouse or compensate them.
More alarming still is the news that tribal activist and Tabuk province resident Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who made several videos protesting against these evictions, was shot dead in October 2020 by Saudi security forces after refusing to leave his home. Alya Alhwaiti, a human rights activist from the same tribe but based in London, circulated the videos, in which al-Huwaiti said he would defy the eviction orders, though he expected Saudi authorities would plant weapons in his house to incriminate him. He was later killed by Saudi security forces, who claimed he had opened fire on them. This version of events was disputed by Alya Alhwaiti, who stated that al-Huwaiti did not own firearms. Eight cousins of al-Huwaiti were later arrested for protesting against the eviction order. However, the tribe assert that they are not opposed to the development of NEOM, but simply do not want to be evicted from their traditional homeland. Alya Alhwaiti also claims to have received death threats in relation to her role as spokesperson, which have been reported to British police. Interestingly, prior to the evictions, in June 2020, the Crown Prince signed a contract worth $1.7 million with a US public relations and lobbying firm to counter the criticism and controversies around the NEOM city project. Following on, in November 2020, British lawyers representing the displaced tribe urged the then British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to boycott the G20 Summit in Saudi Arabia, arguing that Britain has a moral imperative to take a stand in defence of the tribe and to confront Saudi Arabia over its human rights issues. Indeed, pressing questions persist about how tightly Western countries should embrace Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince, whom the US claims approved the 2018 operation in Istanbul, Turkey, which ended with the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.
This all makes for uncomfortable reading. But, you may ask, at least the management of NEOM will treat their employees fairly, if they want a job well done? Right? You would think so, but sadly,his does not seem to be the case either. The CEO of the NEOM project, Nadhmi Al-Nasr, was reported by former employees for promoting a management culture that ‘belittled’ expatriates, made unrealistic demands, and neglected discrimination in the workplace, according to reports in Bloomberg Businessweek and The Wall Street Journal. The resignation letter of a former chief executive, Andrew Wirth, accused Nasr’s leadership of being “consistently inclusive of disparagement and inappropriately dismissive and demeaning outbursts”. Nasr, still CEO at the time of writing, was appointed by the Crown Prince and given the responsibility to lead NEOM, and has been accused during his tenure of berating and scaring his employees, as confirmed by present and former staff members. Anthony Harris, a former director of innovation at NEOM’s education team, accused the Crown Prince of a faulty workplace culture since, he says: “Nadhmi takes his cue from his boss and everyone else at NEOM takes their cue from Nadhmi.” In a recording heard by The Wall Street Journal, Nasr once said at a meeting: “I drive everybody like a slave, when they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.”
It’s looking less and less attractive, isn’t it? But at least it’s good for the environment. Isn’t it? Well, funny you should say that. While the project’s supporters tout The Line’s zero emissions and a smaller footprint than conventional cities, critics note that those utopian ideals will come at an environmental price, as would be expected due to an entirely new city being created in the desert. Conservationists have also pointed out that a 170km long, 500-metre-high skyscraper straddling migration paths will potentially devastate bird populations, while the impact of the construction itself, plus the placing of two gigantic mirrors under intense sunlight in the desert, are also likely to cause environmental damage.
But surely it will be good for residents, if nothing else? After all, some sources say that it will be run according to ‘progressive laws that are compatible with international norms and conducive to economic growth’ Also, in an apparent effort to ease potential residents’ concerns about living under the kingdom’s restrictive laws, a NEOM tourism official recently told the Saudi Gazette that residents would be called ‘Neomians’ and would be subject to different rules than the rest of the country. After the predictable interest in this comment, NEOM then strenuously backpedalled by denying the idea, saying that while the area would be a special economic zone, it would still be part of the kingdom and “subject to all rules … related to security, defence and border protection”.
So, there we have it. A technological marvel, certainly, if it ever gets built, and with some possible benefits to residents – but given the cost to humanity and the environment, is it really worth it? The world will decide. Meanwhile, my family and I, un-elite, non-cosmopolitan as we apparently are, will be sticking to our British brick-built home, in Britain. You know where you are with bricks.