The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, just unveiled his plan to build a megacity in the dessert that will stretch over 10,000 square miles into Jordan and Egypt. That makes the city, called NEOM, six times the size of Dubai and 33 times the size of New York. It will cost the Saudi government more than $500 billion, Bloomberg reports. If it gets off the ground, it will be the first city of the future.
Prince Mohammed introduced his plans for NEOM this week at an investment conference in Riyadh, giving investors a look at a lifestyle not yet available in the religiously conservative country. A promotional video portrayed women working as scientists, musicians, and artists alongside men. Some wore yoga clothing, and no man was pictured in traditional robes. NEOM will be run by semi-automation, like self-driving cars, and it will be governed independently. It was presented as a multicultural oasis of innovation and tourism in a country that literally one month ago did not allow women to drive cars.
Since rising to power and being appointed heir to the throne this summer, Prince Mohammed has laid out a 15-year program to steer Saudi Arabia in a more modern, less ultra-conservative direction, as NEOM and the lifted ban on female drivers show. "Seventy percent of the Saudis are younger than 30. Honestly, we won't waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts. We will destroy them now and immediately," he said at the investment event, News.com.au reports. And Saudi Arabia needs a more economically sound roadmap than sole reliance on oil; it has also invested in entertainment.
As the prince told The Guardian in a follow-up interview, "We are a G20 country. One of the biggest world economies. We're in the middle of three continents. Changing Saudi Arabia for the better means helping the region and changing the world."
Of course, talk is cheap. Previous efforts to build Saudi megaprojects have been unsuccessful, and NEOM is, obviously, a really expensive project that goes against the grain of much of the country's social codes. Not to mention Saudi Arabia's horrendous human rights record, which will still exist, no matter how many videos of women exercising freely are broadcast to the international world. But, to be sure, NEOM will be like nothing that exists now, if investors stick around long enough to see it built.
