Dreams in the desert

Nearly a thousand miles from Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh, laborers toil around the clock moving millions of cubic feet of earth and water. They’re laying the foundation for Neom, a planned 10,000-square-mile project—roughly the size of Vermont—on the Red Sea coast. Nearly 1,000 of an expected 30,000 piles are already in place in the desert floor, and workers are casting 120 more each week.

The Saudi monarchy, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is pursuing a vision to modernize an oppressively conservative Islamic kingdom. The crown prince is betting his rep­utation on a massive campaign creating global tourist destinations in the desert. The plan, Vision 2030, features grandiose construction projects meant to transform the country’s near-total reliance on oil to an economic model based on foreign investment, industry, tourism, and trade. The most ambitious is “The Line,” a linear, mirror-walled city that would stretch 105 miles through mountains and desert.

But like the Biblical attempt to build a tower reaching to heaven, Neom is struggling to come to fruition. Builders working to fulfill the crown prince’s desert dream face practical and logistical hurdles, and the project is running massively over budget. Will this trillion-dollar Saudi gambit succeed, or will Neom fade away like Babel?

The name “Neom” combines the Greek prefix neo—meaning “new”—and mustaqbal, an Arabic word for “future.” The project has multiple regions, including a Red Sea island resort, Sindalah, that opened in October with posh hotels and restaurants. A floating business and industrial park, ski resorts with artificial snow, and the fantastical mirror-walled city are still under construction.

Before bulldozers began moving sand, Crown Prince Mohammed implemented modest societal changes to build internal support and attract international investments for his vision. He reined in Saudi Arabia’s infamous religious police, for example, and allowed mixed-sex seating and concerts in public.

Yet amid the relaxing of laws, the country has driven its foreign workforce fiercely. Human Rights Watch in December reported widespread labor abuse, including withheld wages, dangerous working conditions, and uninvestigated deaths. A British journalist claimed last year that more than 21,000 foreign workers from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal have died since 2016.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Press Association via AP

Officials have also forcibly relocated desert communities to make way for Neom projects. ALQST for Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization, documented evictions of Huwaitat tribespeople without fair compensation and the killing of a resident who refused to leave his home. Five Huwaitat were sentenced to death for resisting evictions and publicly complaining about their treatment.

“Crown Prince Mohammed brooks no criticism,” wrote Karen Elliott House, a Saudi expert at Harvard’s Belfer Center, a few years after the project began. “With Vision 2030, he essentially proclaimed weaning the kingdom off oil a national emergency with a strict deadline for success.”

Is economic resiliency the true purpose of Neom? Or is it about impressing other nations? Saudi Arabia’s construction project is billed as the largest in the world, with 140,000 laborers as of last May.

The Line itself will be some 1,600 feet tall (100 feet higher than the Empire State Building) but only two blocks wide. Cars won’t be allowed, and all daily needs will purportedly be available within a five-minute walk. (To the dismay of privacy advocates, artificial intelligence will track residents’ movement with cameras and digital passes.)

But the Saudis have drastically reduced expectations of late. Just 1.5 miles of the planned 150-mile linear city will be complete by 2030, according to Bloomberg.

“The Line will be more like a dot,” said Matt Bevan, an Australian Broadcasting Corp. journalist, in a recent video assessing Neom’s claims.

The government anticipates spending some $70 billion a year as it ramps up Vision 2030 projects. The Saudis initially said Neom would cost $500 billion, but observers expect the costs to exceed $1.5 trillion. Neom offices opened in London in 2023 and New York City last year to court investors and solicit desperately needed cash to complete the projects and sustain the Saudi economy.

The dream seems impractical even with enough funding: Nine million Line residents living in only 13 square miles would result in a population density six times that of Manila, Philippines, the world’s most densely populated city.

Neom’s thirst for raw materials has potentially global economic effects, too: Manar Al Moneef, Neom’s chief investment officer, told a logistics forum in October the project is consuming 20 percent of the world’s steel output and will be the world’s largest buyer of construction materials for several decades.

Financial analysts have assessed Saudi Arabia’s economic outlook as strong. In November, Moody’s upgraded the country’s foreign currency ratings one notch, citing the Saudis’ diversification efforts and recent spending cuts.

While analysts crunch numbers, work continues in the desert, with Saudi officials aiming to complete a 34,000-seat sports stadium in The Line to host 2034 World Cup matches. Meanwhile, Neom CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr was fired in November, allegedly for missing ­construction milestones. Whether the crown prince will achieve his vision only time will tell.

The Saudis have shot for the moon before. Officials in 2005 announced a similar plan to build six new cities to woo international trade and tourists.

But only one of the six, King Abdullah Economic City, exists today. It has less than 1 percent of its planned population.