Posted on 11/12/2025 5:10:54 AM PST by MtnClimber
Behold, the “Sky Stadium” announced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the latest jazzy edition to their utopian “smart city” project known as The Line or NEOM — an $8-trillion, 105-mile-long megastructure composed of two 1640-foot-high mirrored slabs that enclose a creamy nougat center of jungly foliage and water features integrated with apartments, offices, schools, and (of course) shopping. It’s completely insane, you understand. The Line was first featured on this site in August 2022. Three years on, the project is buckling under the weight of its psychotic grandiosity. Here’s a cross-section of the The Line’s beginning at the Persian Gulf:
Here’s another schematic angle on The Line to appreciate how it shoots straight out into the Arabian Desert:
The 46,000-seat Sky Stadium will be perched 1,150-feet up and is slated to be completed in time for the 2034 Fifa football (soccer) World Cup. The initial A-I generated renderings at the top of the page show it suspended on a skyscraper above a sprawling city, but it is actually designed to be “nested” somewhere between the two slabs of The Line.
First announced in 2017 as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 diversification push, The Line was envisioned as a futuristic “cognitive city” with vertical urbanism, AI integration, 100-percent renewable energy (solar power), and 95-percent land preservation of its barren surroundings in the Tabuk province, “for nature.”
Dunno about you, but I’d be a little nervous about watching a soccer game 1,150-feet above the desert floor. Sounds like a super-gigantic version of one of those Sky Bridge” failures of the 1990s, where a mere hundred drunken people swilling margaritas collapse a hanging architectural folly in a Shopping Mall. We’ll stand by for the halftime show there.
Shout out to Warren McEwan for nominating this humdinger !!!
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EYESORE ping
James Howard Kunstler ping
Nothing spells “What is an adolescent tribal showoff culture?” more than a region to admires rhino-horned blades be worn on a sheik’s waist, and then showing off that oil-money waste by putting up ever-bigger, ever-higher castles and ornaments in the sky for all to see.
“Sky Stadium” has an “Eye of Sauron” vibe.
You know half that stuff will never be built!.............
Bflr
Which poor nation is going to send their destitute slave workers to build this thing? Saudi Arabia sure isn’t going to have their own people doing the scutt labor needed for this unless they pull them from their prisons.
They will be spit on, treated worse than cattle, and abused like playthings in a sexist, racist environment. I’m pretty sure they don’t have any laws covering anything concerning wages or OSHA for these slaves either.
It will be a great day when we have dirt-cheap energy from cold fusion and Arab oil loses its value.
Can you imagine the nightmare of leaving that stadium after a match? No, thanks.
Too much money, and too few brains.
“”Can you imagine the nightmare of leaving that stadium after a match?””
I can’t imagine going there at all!!!!! It would take all day just to take an elevator to the top, wouldn’t it? No thank you....UNREAL!
Actually one reason for finding other sources of oil. Or even making synthetic (manufactured) hydrocarbons, or using biodiesel or even pure vegetable oil( like Rudolf Diesel(peanut oil). Would force middle east “robber barons” out of any significance. IMHO
I understand that the USA only imports about 10% of its oil from middle eastern countries. (IIRC)
Make it a religious shrine so everyone has to go ..
Seriously the whole “LINE” structure is a very inviting target.Easy to destroy its food, water , and it’s power intake.
Sewage handling destruction would be lots of fun..
Most of it won't. It requires building one of the tallest buildings in the world that is also many miles long. The engineering exists, but the financing for the construction is insufficient, thanks to the fact that all the expertise has to be hired from outside the KSA. Even if it were to be built, there's just the fact of how much time it would take, and there's no economic life or local expertise sufficient to sustain it.
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