The Line was conceived as a 500-metre-tall, 170km-long glass-and-steel city designed to house nine million residents along a continuous vertical wall. Central to the project was a “hidden marina” with cruise ships passing beneath a 30-storey upside-down office building, a suspended football stadium, and high-speed rail connecting the desert to the mountains. The audacious designs aimed to redefine urban living, eliminating streets and cars while running entirely on renewable energy.
However, sources close to the project reveal that the laws of physics and escalating costs quickly challenged the utopian vision. Architects warned that suspending a skyscraper upside down could create structural instabilities, while simple infrastructure problems — sewage, water circulation, and natural light for public spaces — became increasingly complex in the vertical city model. Materials demands were immense: each 800-metre module required millions of tonnes of steel and concrete, enough to consume a large percentage of the world’s production, driving prices higher.
Construction, which began in 2022, initially pushed forward with colossal piling and excavation work visible even from space. Yet the project has since been dramatically scaled back. The Line’s 20 planned modules have been reduced to three, and large portions of the infrastructure — including the planned airport and high-speed rail — have stalled. Neom’s developers now say the first phase will focus on completing only a few small buildings around the marina, rather than the sweeping city once envisioned.
Sources describe a working culture marked by extreme pressure and limited room for dissent. Former employees likened the environment to a fairy tale of blind ambition: concerns over feasibility and cost were often ignored, and warnings of technical challenges were dismissed. At the same time, foreign investment that Riyadh had hoped to attract failed to materialise, leaving the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, to shoulder the financial burden.
Environmental challenges have compounded the project’s difficulties. The Line crosses critical migratory routes for millions of birds and several mammal species, while artificial circulation for the deepwater marina requires constant, energy-intensive pumping.
“The Line remains a strategic priority,” a Neom spokesperson told the Financial Times. “It is a multi-generational development of unprecedented scale and complexity.” Yet, insiders acknowledge that much of the original vision — from the chandelier building to the vast high-speed rail network — may never be realized.
The Neom project was initially launched to symbolize Saudi Arabia’s post-oil ambitions and its pivot to a digital economy. While smaller elements, such as the Trojena desert ski resort and limited residential compounds, continue, The Line now stands as a cautionary tale of audacious planning clashing with physics, finance, and practical execution.
