Saudi Arabia scales back plan for 100-mile megacity

Ambitious plans for a 100-mile-long megacity in Saudi Arabia – a key part of the kingdom's $2 trillion redevelopment project – have been put on hold so they can be scaled back.

- BRYONY GOOCH

The Line was meant to be one of the country's so-called giga projects, designed to diversify the economy away from oil through real estate as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan. Now, however, the Riyadh regime appears to have shifted priorities. “We spent too much,” one Saudi official said at a flagship investment forum in the capital last week, according to The Times. “We rushed at 100 miles an hour. We are now running deficits. We need to reprioritise.”

The Line was envisioned as a futuristic linear city in the desert by the Red Sea, part of Saudi Arabia’s Neom city project. Intended to house 9 million people, over a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s population, it was supposed to redefine what cities of the future might look like.