It was on January 10, 2021 When Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman first announced plans to build The Line, Saudi Arabia’s Trillion Dollar City.
The Line is supposed to be the World’s First Vertical City, planned to be part of Saudi Arabia’s Neom, a desert megacity that was launched by Prince Mohammed in 2017 as part of its Vision 2030.
Neom will be spread across a staggering 26000 square kilometres of desert and Saudi Arabia’s goal with the Neom is to make it a country within a country and residents will be known as Neomians rather than Saudis.
And unlike traditional cities that are flat and horizontal, The Line will be sandwiched between 2 enormous mirrored walls that rise 500 Metres into the sky or 1.5 times the size of Eiffel Tower with a gap of 200 metres in between that runs for 170 kilometres from the city of Tabuk to the Red Sea.
There will be housing for almost 9 Million people that will live on a footprint of 34 square Kilometres as opposed to traditional cities that typically have a footprint of around 1500 square Kilometres for a similarly sized population.
The Line will be connected with a high speed rail system travelling at a speed of 510 Kilometre per hour, connecting residents end to end in 20 minutes. Hence eliminating the need for any roads or cars.
The entire city will consist of connected communities called the modules and there will be a total of 135 modules and Each module will be 800 metres long and 500 metres tall.
Amenities such as schools, offices, clinics, supermarkets will be accessible in each module within 5 minutes of walking distance and will be layered on top of each other.
There will be various open spaces on multiple levels within The Line, to allow all residents to access Parks and nature within a 2-minute walk from their home and will also feature views of the surrounding natural landscape, mountains and the sky.
The greenery within the line will be achieved through the environmental designs allowing an optimal balance of sunlight, shade and natural ventilation.
But what makes the line even more special is that it will be a completely eco friendly, 100% powered by renewables.
A vast wind farm as well as a solar plant is being planned alongside the line and developers have also released plans to develop “the world’s largest green hydrogen project” at NEOM, which will cost a staggering 5 Billion Dollars and will produce 650 tonnes of fuel a day.
And in order to tackle the inherent water scarcity problem of the desert, The developers are investing in recycled water projects and solar energy powered desalination plants.
The line will also be equipped with cutting edge Artificial intelligence and all the latest tech, these systems would track all the criminal activities and send security forces to deal with the incidents in real time.
So If The Line comes into fruition it will turn science fiction into reality or as some say our first glimpse of how mankind will survive on Mars.
But this is a big “IF”, as Saudi Arabia has to overcome many challenges to make The Line a success.
And the most important among them is the Money Problem, Although the country has estimated that the construction cost of the line would be close to 335 Billion Dollars but many analysts expect its cost to cross the trillion dollar mark.
Prince Mohammed expects Saudi Arabia to provide half of it and foreign investors to provide the other half.
But Foreign Investors are really nervous to invest in Saudi Arabia as they are really put off by its record on human rights that includes discrimination against women, prosecution for freedom of speech, alleged killing of migrants at its border with Yemen and frequent use of death penalty.
And recently Saudi Arabia has been accused of serious human right abuses particularly at the line construction site where several thousand people were forcibly displaced and several villages destroyed according to a lengthy investigation by the BBC.
Saudi Arabia, however, is trying its best to market itself as a more progressive country, to make its vision 2030 a success by allowing women to drive in 2018, allowing women to participate in the Miss Universe Pageant, opening its first cinema in 2018 and winning the right to host FIFA in 2034.
And despite all the efforts to bring in a 100 Billion Dollars a year in foreign investments, the actual figure has stagnated to a mere 17 Billion dollars a year from 2017 to 2022.
However, even if investors are out of the picture, money still shouldn’t be a problem for Saudi Arabia because of all the oil money that it earns, Right?
Wrong.
Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is expected to fund The Line as of 2023, has less than 20 Billion Dollars, the lowest it has ever been as the cash is rapidly being utilised in the various new projects that Saudi has announced in NEOM, which includes the Trojena a winter Resort, Sindalah Luxury Island, Giant Hotels like Epicon, Upside down skyscraper called Aquellum and a incredible venue carved into the face of the mountain known as Utamo.
And the problem is further exaggerated by the relatively low price of oil in recent years.
But despite all the odds Prince Mohammad bin Salman is not yet ready to give up on his vision and in October of 2022, drone footage released by Ot Sky confirmed that construction on the Line was under way, with excavation taking place along the entire length of the project.
And The Line, unlike other NEOM projects, is not expected to come online by 2030 and will take a few decades more in completion, so money in the short term shall not be as big a problem.
However by 2030, Saudi Arabia wants to complete a part of the line enough for at least 1.5 Million residents to move in.
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