Why the World's Largest Megaproject Collapsed | WSJ [10:53]

YouTube ^ | August 19, 2026 | Eliot Brown, The Wall Street Journal

[SunkenCiv]

Saudi Arabia's futuristic megaproject Neom has come to a standstill, as the extraordinary costs of the planned city have collided with financial reality. After sinking more than $50 billion into Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's dreams of a sci-fi metropolis, the kingdom is now spending billions of dollars more to wind down contracts, leaving mammoth-sized partially built structures to gather sand in the desert. 

WSJ's Eliot Brown analyzes internal documents and satellite images to show how and why the world's largest construction project came to a halt, and what comes next for Neom. 

Why the World's Largest Megaproject Collapsed | WSJ | 10:53 
The Wall Street Journal | 6.67M subscribers | 3,680,983 views | August 19, 2026

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TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: eliotbrown; evensteviewondersaw; neom; saudiarabia

[SunkenCiv]

Chapters:
0:00 Neom's failure
0:39 The vision and design
1:37 The latest updates on the project
3:19 The origins
5:13 Satellite images of projects today
7:02 Ballooning costs
9:43 Mutual delusion

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YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

[SunkenCiv]

Antinoöpolis redux. Job one, desalination system, job two, a suburb for the construction workers and their families, job three, complete the marina project to help establish an economic reason to build a project of this size, or more likely 5 to 10 percent of this size.

[escapefromboston]

Seemed kinda silly

[Nateman]

The Wakanda project in Senegal.

[Gunslingr3]

Seemed kinda silly

Central planning was going to work this time, right up until it didn’t.

[spintreebob]

Any pictures of the tower of Babel?

[Sequoyah101]

Sort of like a snow fence except for sand. Brilliant.

After the first Gulf War I was working for KOC. I asked one of the higher ups what would happen to Kuwait when the oil ran out. He looked grave and out the window to the searing parking lot, a place where in the 100 foot walk from the door to your waiting car under an awning you could feel your eyeballs dry out, then he said: “Ohhh, it will not be good at all. The wind will blow and the sand will cover everything up.” Then he brightened and said, “As for me, I will go to Switzerland, I have a wonderful villa there. You should visit me sometime!”

[Steely Tom]

Kind of like the Burj Khalifa.

But we’re not in much of a position to gloat.

There are two, or maybe three, skyscrapers in NYC that could collapse, literally.

[jimfree]

We can create structures, but we cannot creat life.

[Faith65]

Thanks
BKMK

[SunkenCiv]

Last week I didn’t watch but saw the link for a YT vid about how the Burj is intercoursed, can’t be fixed, can’t be torn down. Probably clickbait. It was a eyecatching prestige project. Those work, the best known is the Great Pyramid.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=burj+khalifa+problems

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure.

[Organic Panic]

50 billion... Pffft. Somali trash in Minnidishu ripped that off without building anything.

[alloysteel]

Now, if they had poured that money in building a embargo-proof alternative route for shipping oil out of their country, thus bypassing the belligerence emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran, they would have something to show for it today.

[TalBlack]

Everything has to be teased. The most salient fact held back to eighty seventh paragraph after repeating one paragraph fourteen times. Where once headline writers let you know what the story was more or less about and then supplied the details in the story now it’s all a dark and bloody secret for as long as they can string you along.

I find I don’t care what this story is about. It’s probably BS any way. It’s all just too tedious.

[PeterPrinciple]

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/saudis-neom-faces-16-billion-103127501.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMfL4zxk5kc8EZfFH-_zUxabRrq6SatHkA-8PMaPPAA7TDH2UyzKWSlvtCcmiErr_Cu9nlTq0Ez128XdEdIXgR51LVb-Xsssrl7lSucgY-L-hPLZ40140jwfbWuSSHlP7yUdTCZ6GuxE9nYuiYT6LN5sa3WJ_MdHGdJ2I8KJjeXC

Saudi authorities expect to spend more money canceling projects at NEOM than building them over the next five years, the latest sign of retrenchment of what was one of the world’s most ambitious development projects.

The vast, futuristic new city in northwestern Saudi Arabia was at one point projected to cost more than $1 trillion to build. Now, NEOM’s budget for 2026 through to 2030 includes 60 billion riyals ($16 billion) in anticipated payments to contractors to terminate long-term agreements, according to people familiar with the matter. The payments, tied to penalty clauses, demonstrate that even halting parts of the project will be expensive nearly a decade after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled the development.

[PeterPrinciple]

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/saudi-neom-halts-line-until-092940610.html

Saudi Arabia’s NEOM has delayed further work on The Line — the planned 170-kilometer long dual skyscrapers once projected to cost more than $1 trillion — until at least after 2030 as the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund shifts spending toward developing infrastructure like ports and data centers.

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money going to ports and data centers instead.

[PeterPrinciple]

https://www.news.com.au/world/saudi-crown-prince-sentences-men-to-execution-for-opposing-futuristic-city/news-story/09dd8a7d65f0218aa86067451616112c

A controversial playboy prince has had three tribesmen sentenced to death for daring to oppose his dystopian dreams of building a futuristic megacity across the Saudi Arabian desert.

The men faced ejection from their tribal lands. Now their death sentence for speaking out against the brainchild of 37-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has been upheld.

[Political Junkie Too]

When they're ready for a futuristic train for their futuristic city, I know who they can call.

-PJ

[Steely Tom]

I think it was basically a vanity project for a family who that have much more money than imagination.