Saudi Arabia Asks Consultants To Reassess Feasibility of 'The Line' Megaproject (middleeasteye.net) 46
Saudi Arabia has asked consultants to reassess the feasibility of The Line, its ambitious 170km linear city project and centerpiece of the Neom initiative, as rising costs and falling oil prices force the kingdom to scale back its megaprojects. Middle East Eye reports: In April, The Financial Times reported that the CEO of Neom had launched a "comprehensive review" of the kingdom's megaproject. Neom, along with luxury Red Sea hotels and a ski resort, is the flagship project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan to transform the kingdom's economy and reduce its dependence on oil revenue. Bloomberg reported in 2024 that Saudi Arabia was cutting back plans for The Line. Instead of 1.5 million people living there by 2030, Saudi officials were said to anticipate fewer than 300,000 residents. Meanwhile, only 2.4km of the city is expected to be completed by 2030.
In April, Goldman Sachs painted a bleak picture for Saudi Arabia's projects in a note to clients, projecting "pretty significant" budget deficits and more scaling back of megaprojects. Neom has already faced internal challenges. Nadhmi al-Nasr, who managed Neom's construction from 2018 to 2024, departed from his post in November. Nasr earned a chilling reputation managing Neom. He bragged that he put everyone to work "like a slave," adding, "When they drop down dead, I celebrate. That's how I do my projects." Two other foreign executives also left Neom at the end of 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In April, Goldman Sachs painted a bleak picture for Saudi Arabia's projects in a note to clients, projecting "pretty significant" budget deficits and more scaling back of megaprojects. Neom has already faced internal challenges. Nadhmi al-Nasr, who managed Neom's construction from 2018 to 2024, departed from his post in November. Nasr earned a chilling reputation managing Neom. He bragged that he put everyone to work "like a slave," adding, "When they drop down dead, I celebrate. That's how I do my projects." Two other foreign executives also left Neom at the end of 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"Feasibility" is pulling a lot of weight here (Score:2)
Re:"Feasibility" is pulling a lot of weight here (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not about Star Wars CGI.
Famous rulers build giant monuments to their own ego. The Egyptian pharaohs did it. The Chinese emperors did it. The Mayas and Aztecs did it.
If a ruler has to abandon a vanity project "because it's not financially feasible" then they're just a second rate ruler, easily forgotten when the next one takes over. That's the real story.
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They should rename it Bysshe.
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Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
[ref [wikipedia.org]]
How stupid are the Saudis? (Score:2, Insightful)
Very, very, very stupid. This whole idea is batshit insane.
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Well, tons of money, a fucked up religion that does not allow them to do anything with it and an education system that is not good either (apparently, nobody wants to learn). So yes, batshit insane covers it nicely.
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Well, tons of money, a fucked up religion that does not allow them to do anything with it and an education system that is not good either (apparently, nobody wants to learn). So yes, batshit insane covers it nicely.
You are talking about America or Saudi Arabia?
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And every religion is fucked up. You're believing something because somebody told you not evidence. That's the definition of faith as it is described in the bible. Not sure about the Quran but equally likely.
And the Quran can be reinterpreted however the hell you want because of how weird the Arab writing is. I don't know the details but because of the way punctuation and tense work
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There are countless hadiths that expand the Muslim confusion to insane levels. The whole 77 virgins thing is in some hadiths and not others. They contradict each other. The Jews have one set of texts. Each version of the Christian Bible varies some. The Muslims are the wild west.
Yeah also don't forget they want to turn America (Score:1, Informative)
Into Saudi Arabia. Basically they want to turn America Into Saudi Arabia. A handful of kings and queens, a very tiny number of people serving them and a vast vast sea of extraordinarily poor people kept down by a combination of brutal violence and religion. All of it maintained in perpetuality by technology that didn't exist the last time we threw off the yoke of slavery.
Here is what techno-feudalism is. You have a very small group of what are effectively kings and queens that own everything and they don't
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I'm not so sure you should be quite so confident about that.
There's a lot of curation, and if you look at the history of that curation you can see a whole lot of barely glossed over stuff... in some cases you will see the same story repeated with names changed, and the one with the names changed is the one you are almost certainly familiar with.
For example, a simple question is... who killed Goliath the Philistine? Was it King David when he was just a little shepherd boy, or was it some other much older leg
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Why should we care for that about some fancy "Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script" living an otherwise normal life in London with his wife and 5 children when we have our own very popular and famous rsilvergun available right here on Slashdot as a excellent resource for the task?
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Irving Finkel is good. But Bart Ehrman is better, he covers a very wide range of topics. He used to be bible-thumping evangelical, was even trained as one. But along the way, he learned to look at the bible in its context, which modern day Christian almost never do. The meaning of the words has been changed drastically over time. And he's good for pointing out contradictions. He no longer even believes in God, knowing what a human-constructed concept God actually is.
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I'm not saying any of it is true. I'm just saying Judaism is more centralized and standardized in regards to texts, while Islam with the hadiths is all over the place. It's not a judgment on the religions themselves as being better than each other.
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Well we have the Torah and the Talmud. Take meat and milk. Every sect has it's own interpretation as to how much and how long. The Chinese Jews believe the prophet takes precedence over the scholars and tracked cows, their milk and calves to make sure they literally never did the wrong boiling.
I personally like too reflect on the silliness of it while eating a bacon and cheese bagel.
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Pig milk cheese is hard to find.
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Re: How stupid are the Saudis? (Score:2)
And the Quran can be reinterpreted however the hell you want because of how weird the Arab writing is. I don't know the details but because of the way punctuation and tense works in the language you can basically read whatever the hell you want into it. The Christian Bible has the same thing going on because there isn't a single voice in the bible.
It has the same thing going because it was also written in a 2000+ year old language(s) right?
I don't know anything about ancient Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek, but I know how difficult it is to translate exact meaning between two modern languages. There is just no way that ancient Hebrew to modern English is a straighter line than ancient Arabic? to modern Arabic? I'll bet a hamburger on that at least.
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And every religion is fucked up.
Sure. But degree matters. The Saudies are maybe on the level of the Evangelicals or other really bad groups.
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Don't forget stupid. Batshit insane doesn't cover it.
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LOL! (Score:2)
I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
"Dear MBS... no, the line is not feasible. You'd have to be a fever-dreaming megalomaniac to even imagine one-hundredth of that ridiculous vanity project could ever be built. The ego of such a tyrant would be unmatched... unmatched, that is, except by his stupidity. Wait... what are you doing with that saw? Put it down! MBS! Hey!... AAAAAAAAAA!
Goldman Sachs regrets to inform the public of the disappearance of its consultant to The Line. No
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I mean they could build some of it, if they had come out and said ti was 5km long that would still be a huge project and very impressive but it's at least riding that line of pushing the limits.
Saying its going to be 170km is just, you're just being a goof at that point, like, why not say it's a thousand km, just start building a space elevator at that point, you can solve the problems as you go.
No fucking shit (Score:5, Interesting)
I get claustrophobia just looking at at it. 200 meters is way too thin. It needs to be at least 500 meters wide. The high speed train idea is good, just make it a bunch of towns on a maglev line. 100 km long, with no place more than 10 mins from condo door to hospital, fire service, movie theater, and shopping.
Re:No fucking shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's another small tweak: Fold the line back on itself to form a grid!
That way, you can ditch the whole train thing and just walk to all of your destinations. Plus, you get an urban plan that has been proven workable since the days of ancient Mesopotamia.
Re:No fucking shit (Score:4, Interesting)
But if a new city was to be build then either a grid or a series of circles joined by radiating roads clustered around a purposeful center would make a lot more sense than a line. Neom reminds me of those dumb mega projects architects sometimes throw sketches of out to tabloids to gain free publicity than something anyone was taking seriously.
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Blocks / grids might be common in the US but they aren't super common in Europe, Middle East or Asia. A new city might have a central core (e.g. a palace, or central forum which was designed) designed on a grid. Or maybe a Roman settlement grows from a military encampment. But that structure is soon subsumed as the city grows & absorbs nearby encampments & villages. Then it becomes a hodge podge of streets and alleys. Thereafter there will be periodic efforts to knock parts to widen roads or remodel slums etc. but it's quite organic. Circular designs were common in Mesopotamia and even Baghdad was modeled on a circle but it doesn't last.
But if a new city was to be build then either a grid or a series of circles joined by radiating roads clustered around a purposeful center would make a lot more sense than a line. Neom reminds me of those dumb mega projects architects sometimes throw sketches of out to tabloids to gain free publicity than something anyone was taking seriously.
This is because the US didn't have ancient towns that grew into cities, they basically started building cities in the modern era.
Australia is similar with streets having a rough grid pattern except that often they're even more modern so have the benefit of planned main and feeder roads (traffic is still terribad but that's due to the abysmal Australian drivers, which to be far are not quite as abysmal as American drivers). UK and European cities as well as a lot of Asian cities grew organically long befo
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Re: No fucking shit (Score:2)
"Here's another small tweak: Fold the line back on itself to form a grid!"
Give it a half twist and you can live on both sides.
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I get claustrophobia just looking at at it. 200 meters is way too thin.
In many given city positions you are in you have far less than 200m sideways visibility. That goes double for American "grid" style cities. Additionally the sides are glass giving you a view of the desert. No one would experience claustrophobia inside it, including you.
same calculation as usal (Score:2)
1. X million pure planning & construction costs ..
2. X million for additional planning & additional construction costs
3. X for errors in planning & additional construction costs
4. X for fraud
5. 10 * X for professional fraud
6. X for certifications & safety
7. 10 * X for corrections in planning & construction to fit certification needs
8. 100 * X for more professional fraud
9. 75 * X for adapting to new laws due to changes in 20 years later than expected completion
= 200 * X of the pure costs
The Saudi Arabian Dream... (Score:2)
A city nobody wants, a bonesaw in every garage.
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This is Saudi Arabia. These are foreign, third world workers. Imported expendables like any other construction material.
How do I get a job as one of the consultants? (Score:1)
Lol the "Line" was never feasible (Score:4, Insightful)
Same goes for some of Saudi Arabia's other mega projects - ski slopes, mega resorts, giant cube buildings ffs. While not as outrageously stupid as the Line, they'll still cost billions and likely fail in their ambitions. Imagine if the kingdom used the money for the betterment of its people instead of wasting it on boondoggles - solar farms, desalination plants, land reclamation, housing, health, roads / mass transit, liberalisation, democracy / rights etc. If the idea is to prepare for a post-oil world then all those things would pay off far better than pouring blood and money into the sand.
Why don't they focus on finishing one first? (Score:2)
They've FINALLY restarted construction on the Jeddah Tower - why not get that done first and the whole "economic city" around it and then worry about the next one. It's taken them almost a decade just to start building again.
Nadhmi al-Nasr may have an accident soon (Score:2)
I'd be nervous if I were Nadhmi al-Nasr. MBS doesn't like failure or criticism, and this project has brought on both.
Remember that journalist (Jamal Khashoggi) MBS had a beef with? MBS even admitted Khashoggi was murdered and yet there were minimal consequences for everyone involved. And, who really believes this was an isolated incident?