“We Have the Cash, We Have the Land”: Saudi Crown Prince
Saudi Arabia will prove wrong the doubters who believe the Kingdom’s megaprojects, including THE LINE in NEOM, cannot be built, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman said, according to a report by Oil and Gas Middle East. “They say about a lot of projects happening in Saudi Arabia ‘It can’t be done [and] this is very ambitious.’ They can keep saying that and we can keep proving them wrong,” the Crown Prince said.
THE LINE megaproject is a 170-kilometre-long city that is expected to house as many as 10 million people and will be the beating heart of the Kingdom’s NEOM’s $500 billion megaproject. The project is a vertically interconnected city, which will be free of cars, have zero carbon emissions, be powered entirely by clean energy, and be run by artificial intelligence.
Construction on the vast site began in April 2022, and the first city district, the Hidden Marina, is set to welcome residents and visitors by or before 2030. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented on July 25, 2022, the designs of THE LINE, a city located in NEOM. But THE LINE will not only be technically possible, it will also be beautiful too, the Crown Prince said.
“Engineering and design is not enough without art. We don’t want to create a city without having the whole city as a piece of art.”
Every city in the world is structured on a constant problem-solution model, but a top-down solution allows for the building of something as expansive as THE LINE, according to the Crown Prince.“Any new city is going to have to be top-down,” he said.
THE LINE will be the centrepiece of NEOM, one of the world’s most ambitious sustainable urban developments. When completed, NEOM will be home to smart towns, ports, research hubs, sports and entertainment venues, and tourism centres.
“We have the cash. We have the land. We have the stability. We have a good infrastructure. We are a G20 country. We want to create new civilization for tomorrow and we need to encourage other nations to keep doing the same things for a better planet,” the Crown Prince noted.
