Posted on 11/20/2025 7:24:37 AM PST by Miami Rebel
It appears that Neom—Saudi Arabia’s hugely expensive, architecturally bizarre urban development project—is floundering and close to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort.
Neom was envisioned as a vast series of fantastical urban developments spread across the coast of the Red Sea. At the center of the project is The Line—a proposed 105-mile-long city which developers had initially projected could house as many as 9 million people by the year 2030. The Line is defined by bizarre architectural flourishes that, as the story notes, have seemed impossible even to the execs tasked with making them a reality. One such addition is an upside-down building, dubbed “the chandelier,” that is supposed to hang over a “gateway” marina to the city:
As architects worked through the plans, the chandelier began to seem implausible. One recalled warning Tarek Qaddumi, The Line’s executive director, of the difficulty of suspending a 30-storey building upside down from a bridge hundreds of metres in the air. “You do realise the earth is spinning? And that tall towers sway?” he said. The chandelier, the architect explained, could “start to move like a pendulum”, then “pick up speed”, and eventually “break off”, crashing into the marina below.
Yes, that doesn’t sound great. Now, according to those sources the FT talked to, the project is looking more and more like a hugely expensive pipe dream that will never come to pass:
Today, with at least $50bn spent, the desert is pock-marked with piling, and deep trenches stretch across the landscape. But Prince Mohammed, who chairs Neom, has dramatically scaled back the first phase of the plans. Neom told the FT that The Line remained “a strategic priority” that would ultimately “provide a new blueprint for humanity by changing the way people live”. But they described it as a “multi-generational development of unprecedented scale and complexity”.
It reminds me of Francis Ford Coppola's distavorous "Megalopolis" flop, only this is for $50 billion.
Babal.
Or they could hire Chinese contractors thus ensuring the chandelier would immediately "break off."
Guess that’s what happens when you have too much money.
“No, Saudi Arabia's NEOM project — the broader futuristic region that includes the infamous “The Line” linear city — is not fully “crashing and burning,” but its most ambitious and hyped element, The Line, has been dramatically scaled back, delayed, and plagued by cost overruns, making the original 2017-2021 vision look increasingly unrealistic as of late 2025.”
It looks pretty good as compared to the disastrous Newsom fast rail project in California.
Plus the Saudis have the money.
Newsom doesn't.
The California “high speed rail project” have too much money?
Florida’s development is quite linear because the Gulf and the Atlantic moderate temperatures.
There’s a reason why Saudi Arabia should want linear development.
Florida’s development is quite linear because the Gulf and the Atlantic moderate temperatures.
Until the Hurricane comes, like in 1926.
You can’t stop developments because some bad hurricane came in 1926.
The Saudi’s are the ones who caused the 911 terrorist attack against America.
And now it appears we will be giving them nuclear technology and massive AI technology... We are shooting ourselves in the foot with a cannon (at best)...
Well, they caught a break with Andrew, because if it hit about 20 miles north of where it did, it would have devastated South Florida, and they might still be trying to recover today.
Interesting but bizarre
People have to dream
Architecture needs dreamers or it gets stale
Glass gets boring but it’s cheaper so u see it so much
Only the feds and universities can be granite sided monument buildings $$$$
I was always sus about the viability of it
I don’t think that’s a small view held
If follow the Dubai model
If I was a middle eastern oil monarch that is
They seem to be attempting to make a utopia to draw and enlarge their population, but don’t understand that no one sane would voluntarily live their life under a Wahhabi regime of inbred savages who lucked into too much money.
16 anti Saudi government Al Quaeda terrorists did.
The Saudi government didn't.
“And now it appears we will be giving them nuclear technology and massive AI technology... We are shooting ourselves in the foot with a cannon (at best)...”
Nuclear energy technology you mean, which the Saudi's can get from anywhere.
AI for Saudis?
Very good! Musk is going to build a massive AI data center there too.
They were planning to put a 30,000 seat soccer arena on top of a skyscraper.
What could possibly go wrong?
All big ambitious projects suffer setbacks. In the end people remember the finished product, not the setbacks along the way.
Looked god on paper...
If
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