© AFPMany architectural experts are now questioning the sustainability and liveability of the NEOM City Project being built in Saudi Arabia
In the video, the excavators were seen digging wide trenches in the desert. Situated in the West Asian country's north-west Tabuk province, is a 170-kilometre-long, 500-metre-tall city which aims to house nine million people and also boasts a mirrored wall.
This is however one among the series of projects which make the $500 billion Neom project. The project wants to build a futuristic city with spaces for work, play and living powered by AI and where everything will be accessible 'within a five-minute walk and an efficient public transport network will offer an end-to-end journey in just 20 minutes.'
The city will be powered by renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydrogen power and become the first city in the world to be powered by renewable energy. Lush vegetation will be planted throughout the city to promote coexistence with nature.
Saudi prince Mohammed Bin Salman, also known as MBS, who announced the plans said this will create a new way of living boosted by clean energy.
Neom Bay, Aqaba Region, Neom Mountain and Neom Industrial City, are likely to surround The Line.
However, experts speaking to architecture magazine DeZeen expressed their skepticism about the project saying that the claims regarding the sustainability and liveability of Saudi's 170-kilometre city are "naive".
"There would be so many physical and environmental phenomena that would have to be dealt with to achieve the incredibly minimal and singular character that the renderings propose," Marshall Brown, director of the Princeton Urban Imagination Center and an associate professor of architecture at Princeton University was quoted as saying by DeZeen.
This is highly unlikely to deter Saudi officials who are involved in the project as well as MBS. The death sentence handed down to three men from the Huwaitat tribe, who refused to leave their homes after their land was seized by NEOM city officials shows that the Saudi's want to achieve the objective.
Saudi Arabia and London-based humanitarian organisation ALQST reported that Shadli al-Huwaiti, Ibrahim al-Huwaiti and Ataullah al-Huwaiti were forcibly evicted from the Neom site in Saudi Arabia and were sentenced to death.
I've heard that Saudi's can be quite superstitious, or Afraid of Ghosts! Sounds like a great set up for a haunting to me.
Also, how would such a wall hold up to dust storms? Even if it holds up, wouldn't all that glass and mirroring get etched?