Megaproject The Line has likely failed

Work on The Line, the linear city in the Saudi Arabian desert, has ceased. The megaproject has likely failed: – for financial and physical reasons, as reported by the Financial Times.

The Line was intended to stretch over 170 kilometers through the desert in northwestern Saudi Arabia, on the Gulf of Aqaba. It was planned to be only 200 meters wide but 500 meters high. Nine million people were to live in an area of just 34 square kilometers. The city was to include a deep-water port for cruise ships, a high-altitude football stadium, and below it, a hanging building called The Chandelier.

The project, initiated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is highly controversial in several respects highly controversial, partly because people were forcibly resettled for it. Critics considered the plans unrealistic from the outset. In the end, reality has evidently caught up with the project, according to the Financial Times report.

Manipulated Finances

Even the financing was unrealistic: official figures initially amounted to 500 billion US dollars. Project employees were informed at the end of 2021, before construction began, that a budget of 1.6 trillion US dollars was planned. A few months later, an audit was conducted, after which nearly three times that amount, namely 4.5 trillion US dollars, was considered realistic, the business newspaper learned from insiders. This is roughly equivalent to Germany's annual economic output. A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal gained insight into an internal report according to which the finances of management members were manipulated.

Some ambitious plans barely stand up to reality: A stadium was to be built at a height of 350 meters for the 2024 Football World Cup. Below it, the chandelier building was to hang freely, above the entrance to the deep-water port.

That would certainly have looked impressive. However, it would have been hardly physically possible. It starts with the wastewater from toilets and showers: Where was it supposed to drain? According to the vision of those responsible, vehicles were supposed to transport the wastewater.

Furthermore, the hanging building could have swung due to wind and eventually fallen into the depths. An informant told the Financial Times that the architects had pointed this out to those in charge. However, they had ignored these objections.

Danger from Stagnant Water

The port, which was to be large enough for cruise ships to dock, could have posed a serious health risk: it would have been connected to the sea by a canal. The canal and port would have become stagnant water bodies without any current, where all sorts of microbes would have spread.

The Line was to be built in modules, with each module being 800 meters long. The first two modules were to be completed by 2030. One module requires around 7 million tons of steel and 5.5 million cubic meters of concrete. The project would have consumed about 60 percent of the world's annual production of green steel, says an informant for the British business newspaper.

The environmental impact would have been immense: The city would have stretched across the desert as a 170-kilometer-long, reflective ribbon, hindering the migration routes of desert dwellers and the flight paths of many birds. There was a risk that birds would fly into the reflective surface and injure or kill themselves.

The Line is part of the Neom initiative, which encompasses several projects in the northwest of the country. Neom is part of Saudi Vision 2030, a concept for restructuring the economy to become independent of oil. It includes several individual projects in northwestern Saudi Arabia. Among them are the luxury resort island Sindalah, inaugurated last year but not yet completed; Trojena, a ski resort in the mountains inland; the city of Oxagon, which is to be built half on land and half on floating pontoons; and indeed, The Line.

For Neom officials, The Line is not yet buried: The Line remains a “strategic priority,” says a Financial Times representative. It is “a generational development project of unprecedented scale and complexity.” However, it will “deliver a new blueprint for humanity by transforming the way people live.”

(wpl)