The Neom Line Dystopia

Saudi Arabia’s pet arcology, Neom, only just came to my attention now… construction began last year. It is everything that we critics of Smart Cities have been claiming, cranked to 11 and the knob ripped off.

And then it got weird. I never know where my deep dives will end up.

h ttps://neomcityguide.com/the-line/

What is Line?
It is a model of sustainable urban design and livability for the twenty-first century and beyond. THE LINE will transform urban life as we know it, allowing NEOM to become an economic engine for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the region, and the rest of the globe. THE LINE is a never-before-seen urbanization method — a 170km-long linear urban development comprising various, hyper-connected communities, with walkable neighborhoods interwoven with public parks and the natural landscape.

THE LINE runs through NEOM, connecting the Red Sea coast to the mountains and upper valleys of Saudi Arabia’s northwestern region.

Just that picture says a lot. Rule one of real estate: Location. Why build a city here? Nobody has before, obviously. There’s not much agriculture. Nothing I scanned talks about mineral wealth. The western end will have a seaport but it doesn’t look deep or sheltered. There are some highways/trade routes nearby, notably the Suez Canal, but nothing to expand upon.

Desolate, cheap land is a good place for only a few things. Animal grazing, mainly. Experimental projects, which this is not this because it’s expected to be inhabited and profitable… think Area 51 or quarantined agriculture.  Dangerous or space-intensive industry such as explosives, aircraft storage and solar farms. Exotic living arrangements for the wealthy, monastic and/or misanthropic.

And prisons. Self-contained communities whose inhabitants are neither expected to be productive nor permitted to leave.

I’m sure this land COULD be made habitable & profitable. So could Antarctica. With enough expensive infrastructure. A good site for a new city is one that doesn’t need a lot of infrastructure.

My next observation is that this is an incredibly inefficient layout for a city. Nothing is close to anything. No shape spreads out the community and infrastructure more than a straight line does. Most cities are circular in order to minimize costs and make efficient use of land area. 

The old Bolsheviks liked the idea of linear cities because it de-industrialized society and reunited workers with the means of production (also the chimney smoke of production), but that died out a century ago with little being built.

At first glance, and knowing this is the same people who built Dubai, I would guess that the purpose of Neom is to connect a waterfront beach resort with a mountain ski resort, with all the helots who keep the place running kept in isolated, impoverished hamlets along the road and out of sight.

I nailed it.

This is Oxagon, the western end of the Line. As I suspected, it’s not a sheltered port; in fact, most of it is supposed to be free-floating. I’ve never before heard of a city whose industrial base didn’t have a foundation. It sounds insane to this resident of the Pacific Ring of Fire. This is close to Suez Canal so I expect its real purpose will be maritime shipping rather than “innovative water solutions to Saudi Arabia’s lack of desalination”. Quoting some marketing copy.

Not pictured: The future mansions, estates, private docks and yachts of the royal family & friends.

The east end of the line is Trojena, the ski & swim resort.

h ttps://blooloop.com/technology/news/saudi-arabia-neom-trojena/

Trojena will be a first-of-its-kind experience, offering outdoor skiing in a desert climate. There will be a ski village and ski slope, as well as wellness resorts, an interactive nature reserve, retail outlets and restaurants.

Outdoor skiing in Saudi Arabia. Sure, that’ll be sustainable & carbon-neutral.

Highlights include a man-made freshwater lake and a vertical village that will merge technology, entertainment and hospitality facilities. It will serve as the main gateway into Trojena, which will feature six districts – Gateway, Discover, Valley, Explore, Relax and Fun.

“Trojena represents Neom’s values and bold plans as a land where nature and innovative technologies come together to form a unique global experience,” said Neom CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr.

Nature… tech… but where’s Daddy? Segue

h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom

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.” He even threatened to replace employees stuck in other countries during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, which included the former director of branding and marketing too.

End segue

“This new development is a major contribution to achieving Neom’s long-term ambitions by adhering to the principles of sustainability and utilizing state-of-the-art technology and engineering, across various disciplines, to make Neom an all-round and attractive world-class destination.”

Trojena expects to attract 700,000 visitors and 7,000 residents by 2030. The destination will create more than 10,000 jobs and add SAR 3 billion to Saudi Arabia‘s GDP by 2030.

Wait a minute. Most of humanity will be dead of Climate Change by 2030 and unable to visit this new resort. Which is it? “The ocean levels are rising” or “Al Gore just bought another oceanfront property”?

So, yeah. Neom is an oceanfront shipping & yachting community connected to an enormous ski resort by high-speed rail. But like an Oreo cookie, what’s in the middle?

h ttps://www.dezeen.com/2021/01/13/line-saudi-arabia-170-kilometres-long-city-neom/

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, has unveiled plans for a 100-mile belt of zero-energy walkable communities for a million people.

The linear city will have no cars or streets, with all residents living within a five-minute walk of essential facilities.

Bin Salman announced plans for The Line in a video where he described it as a “civilisational revolution that puts humans first.”

No, it literally puts humans LAST. The reason this city is a big gamble is that nobody currently lives there. Build the city first, then expect people to show up en masse? Very, very risky. Even “destination cities” such as Las Vegas were built incrementally, and not as self-contained public works projects.

“What will our new house be like, Daddy?”

“It’ll be modular and interchangeable, like me.”

The 100-mile-long (170 kilometres) mega-city will consist of connected communities – which it calls “city modules” – and link the Red Sea coast with the north-west of Saudi Arabia.

It will be a part of Neom, Saudi Arabia’s fully automated $500 billion region that will span Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt and be entirely powered by renewable energy.

Um… why bring in a million people if the place is automated?

The Line will have no cars or streets

According to Bin Salman, who is also the chairman of the Neom company board of directors, construction of The Line will start in the first quarter of 2021.

The city will have no cars or streets, with everything its inhabitants need accessible within a five-minute walk.

That’s not a selling point to potential residents. “The only way out is via this remotely controlled train. You will not be allowed to own a vehicle capable of independent travel between modules. Trust the AI. Trust Big Brother”.

“High-speed transportation, utilities, digital infrastructure, and logistics will be seamlessly integrated in dedicated spaces running in an invisible layer along The Line,” said a statement.

Drawings show vehicles driven by artificial intelligence (AI), a metro line and high-speed freight transportation located underground. Overground will be a “pedestrian layer” supported by two underground layers – one “service layer” level of infrastructure directly underneath the ground and a lower-level “spine layer” for transport.

Why put ALL transportation TWO STORIES BELOW the ground? Ground level is cheap & easy. Elevated rail might be scenic. But below ground? That’s expensive to build, difficult to maintain or expand and… difficult to access.

Either they’re bunkering against a global plague or the Line is an open-air prison run by a computer program.

Furthermore, notice those special, central high-speed lines? The Elites don’t even want to share the same infrastructure as the pawns.

“An estimated 90 per cent of available data will be harnessed to enhance infrastructure capabilities far beyond the 1 per cent typically utilised in existing smart cities,” it added.

Buildings will be carbon-positive and powered by clean energy and according to Neom, the layout of The Line will mean that 95 per cent of the land in the Neom region, which is located on a key trade route, is protected.

Neom was announced in 2017 and is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 drive to diversify its economy and become less reliant on oil. The area will be populated by more robots than people, and powered by solar panels and wind farms.

Going “green” and going “robotic automated” are two very different directions, unless you’re in the know that “green” is a code word for totalitarianism, and then it makes perfect sense. Say what you will about ED-209, it was Robocop that went rogue.

Saudi Arabia wants to become less reliant on oil? Sure, and the Caymans want to diversify away from banking. Which actually would be a good idea; single-resource economies are volatile; but Neom is not expected to produce anything. There are no natural resources to exploit. The only named industry is tourism in an artificially maintained environment. The only mention of manufacturing in the brochures was desalination. That didn’t sound like shipbuilding or consumer goods, and why desalinate far away from existing cities?

A city that prides itself on insular self-sufficiency, with its infrastructure buried as much as possible, sounds a lot more like a survival bunker than a profitable & comfortable place to live. And Prince Salman demands it be finished by 2030? Hmm.

Speaking of single-resource problems, the concept of a single service tunnel for a hundred-mile-long city is criminal negligence. A mere building with a single entrance/exit would be declared a safety hazard. Entire communities with one point of failure? That’s so absurd, it suggests that cutting off services to a community at a moment’s notice is a design feature. Are the Elites going to donate their luxury drone-copters if there’s a brushfire forcing evacuations? Because the people, we’re told upfront, won’t be owning any transport.

One last article… and down the proverbial rabbit hole we go!

The pyramids of the 21st century?

h ttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11055659/The-new-pyramids-Thats-vision-Saudi-tyrant-desert-city-cost-1-TRILLION.html

By Tom Leonard, 27 July 2022

This article is how the project came to my attention. All the previous articles were last year, celebrating the start of construction. One year later, how’s it going?

Just imagine, if you can, a 105-mile long, pencil-thin horizontal skyscraper — a sidescraper — that cuts through high mountains and arid desert.

It will house a city of nine million people. There will be no cars or streets but flying taxis: oh and a giant fake moon, animatronic dinosaurs and an army of robots to harvest food, cook and clean for the pampered population.

And carbon emissions will be zero.

What I just heard as an investor was, “if you came to Saudi Arabia to invest in anything other than oil then you’re dumb enough to believe this.” Which is fair.

“We’re serious.”

No way!

Announced in 2017 by the prince, Neom is the flagship project in a masterplan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy as the world increasingly turns to greener energy alternatives.

Five years on, Neom — which MBS insists must be finished by 2030 — has been plagued by setbacks as an army of workers and advisers struggle to cope with his mercurial temperament and ever-changing ideas.

MBS, 36, reportedly found the site for his dream city in Saudi Arabia’s remote province of Tabuk, after landing there in his helicopter. ‘I want to build my pyramids,’ he told advisers. He has already built a palace there.

Welcome to Clown World, where the world’s leaders lost their minds twenty years ago but are still obscenely wealthy.

The glittering centrepiece of Neom will be The Line, an elongated ‘linear’ city 33 times the size of New York. Situated close to the borders with Jordan and Egypt, it will stretch from desert in the east to the Red Sea in the west. The Line, which is being designed by cutting-edge U.S. firm Morphosis Architects, is actually two tall buildings running parallel, connected by walkways. 

Wait, what? The “isolated communities joined by a high-speed rail line” was at least plausible. A total redesign after construction begins is a very… bad… sign…

It will be just 656ft (200m) wide. They will have mirrored surfaces and rise up to 1,640ft (500m) above sea level — taller than the Empire State Building.

This can’t be happening.

A high-speed rail link running under The Line will allow passengers to get from one end of the city to the other in just 20 minutes… So-called ‘smart’ technology is capable of independent action and pretty much everything about Neom will be smart. The vegetables that will grow vertically from the sides of buildings will be ‘autonomously harvested’ by robots and transported to ‘community canteens’. Residents will pay a subscription for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

MBS says Neom will be a test bed for new technologies that could revolutionise urban life. Despite the region having almost no fresh water and temperatures that soar above 100F, its planners pledge that Neom’s citizens will live in harmony with nature. Desalination plants will process water from the Red Sea and the baking sun will provide solar energy to a fully renewable electric grid.

This isn’t a completely different project… but what the hoo-haw happened?

Challenges remain, not least the amount of shadow that will be created by the parallel buildings. Neom planning papers concede that lack of sunlight could damage the health of some inhabitants.

Other innovations include a Jurassic Park-style island of robot dinosaurs, advanced surveillance systems using drones and microphones to ‘guarantee the safety of the inhabitants’ by monitoring their every move, and holographic teachers ready to teach on demand in schools.

This still has the bones of WEF “you will own nothing and be happy”, but… two Empire State Buildings 100 miles wide?

And when the white paper called for most of the workforce to be robotic, I didn’t know they meant robo-dinosaurs.

Cloud seeding, a technology designed to create rain by modifying the weather and outside temperature, will cool the city and water the crops that will provide fresh produce.

The technical term for that is “anthropogenic climate change”.

Silver Beach, a seaside community for at least 50,000 people, was inspired by the Cote d’Azur and designed by an Italian firm that specialises in creating superyachts. Instead of sand, the beach would have been crushed marble because it would shimmer silver in the sun. Sources say it was scrapped as it wasn’t considered sufficiently ‘distinctive’.

Heh, my opening hunch really was on the money… but like the robo-dinos, I still had no idea.

“Let’s use crushed diamonds for sand at this resort.”

“Nah, I overheard one of the helots mentioning that he gave his wife a diamond ring for their wedding. We don’t want to look like commoners.”

Gardens and parks, plus a huge sports stadium 1,000ft up where robots could some day wrestle in cage fights, will be housed between the parallel buildings.

Is this for real? Did MBS really demand this? I don’t know what’s real anymore.

Challenges remain, not least the amount of shadow that will be created by the parallel buildings. Neom planning papers concede that lack of sunlight could damage the health of some inhabitants.

Another stumbling block has been over the 20,000 tribespeople the government plans to relocate. Some have been saying they won’t be removed from ancestral lands: one who refused to back down was denounced as a ‘terrorist’ and killed by Saudi special forces.

This is real enough that blood has been spilled.

MBS is a sci-fi fan and the Neom team has commissioned work from, among others, designers who created the look of the Guardians Of The Galaxy and Dark Knight Batman films, as well as a futurist who worked on the dystopian zombie movies World War Z and I Am Legend. Chris Gray, a California writer, says he was hired to research the ‘aesthetics’ of key sci-fi films and books, including Blade Runner.

Also like the robo-dinos, I thought “dystopian” was the intent of Neom Line rather than its ARTISTIC THEME.

“Here’s your new community module. You’ve been assigned to ‘Zombie Zion’. Settle in and we’ll start the medical experiments tomorrow.”

It’s already obvious that we’re headed into some really hard times. But I never stopped to think about whether plutocrats who have an entire world to lose, might take it worse than me with little more than my next meal to lose.

Serious question: has Mohammed bin Salman lost his mind? Or is this the most epic money laundering scam ever? This reads like he knew he needed a “smart city” refuge for what’s about to happen, and set up to fund it via Climate Change grifting as one would expect, then… his dacha in the woods ain’t gonna be 33 times bigger than New York City.