Agosto 21, 2026

The astounding delusion of Neom.


ADDED: Back in 2021, I blogged a NYT article about the the part of the project called "the Line" —  "a postmodern ecotopia... a narrow urban strip 106 miles long with no roads, no cars and no pollution...." Here's how Saudi Arabia announced the project:

38 komento:

Original Mike ayon kay ...

The Line.
They should have started with The Hyphen.

This thing was always ridiculous. Pretty renderings, though.

bagoh20 ayon kay ...

We could send Gavin Newsom to show them how to keep it alive.

Aggie ayon kay ...

A tremendous loss of face, which is a monstrous result in that culture. The magic word that explains all of this mess is around 3 minutes in: 'Consultants' were hired, and a 2,000 page proposal followed.

It's a monorail, friends !

Aggie ayon kay ...
Naalis ng may-ari ang komentong ito.
Aggie ayon kay ...

I say, there's nuthin' on Earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified, six-car monorail !

Big Mike ayon kay ...

@Aggie, not even an eight car monorail?

R C Belaire ayon kay ...

Visionaries like MBS are always ridiculed. 'Tis a shame, no?

Howard ayon kay ...
Naalis ng may-ari ang komentong ito.
Howard ayon kay ...

Between this and LIV golf, MBS is SOL. Maybe he'll get the Jamal Khashoggi treatment.

narciso ayon kay ...

Its the kind of gleaming high tech city people say they want

Peachy+2 ayon kay ...

bagoh - lol

Peachy+2 ayon kay ...

I was expecting a NYT devastation crap on Kristi.

Achilles ayon kay ...

Is it doing better or worse than the money we spend homeless people so women can have more air conditioned jobs?

Jay Vogt ayon kay ...

The "crown prince" MBS is a prince. About a 40 year old guy who's never really done anything. And Saudi Arabia is a KINGDOM, not a country!

However they are either very lucky or very good at keeping the US Navy doing what's required to protect their ONLY source of revenue.

And, it's a KINGDOM - funny how that works

bagoh20 ayon kay ...

I remember seeing this in the planning stages and thinking it would be awesome and ambitious, but doable. At that time it wasn't this crazy ambitious. It just needs sharks with laser beams.

Narr ayon kay ...

Who could have seen that coming> (Besides anyone who has studied Islam and Arabs for ten minutes?)

In the 1830s Muhamed Ali (not the boxer but a capable janissary of Balkan origin) tried to modernize Egypt by building state-of-the-art cotton mills to take advantage of the rising world demand for textiles . . . and after a couple of years the whole project had collapsed.

Jay Vogt knows--when the world moves out of the petroleum era the Saudis (and others in that neighborhood) will first starve and then revert to lives as stunted and backward as those of their great-great-great-great grandparents.

Quaestor ayon kay ...
Naalis ng may-ari ang komentong ito.
Quaestor ayon kay ...

Before I clicked the play button, I said to myself, water. Then I looked up this two mundane facts: (1) The population of metropolitan Tokyo is 14 million. (2) The Tokyo Metropolitan Waterworks Bureau supplies a maximum daily distribution of about 4.48 million cubic meters, averaging roughly 200 to 230 liters of domestic water use per person daily.

Then I said to myself, Neom ain't happening. It's the dumbest idea in the history dumb and wasteful ideas. Why should I click that play button? But that would be rude. Althouse went to the trouble to embed this video. The least I could do is watch it. So I did and was dismayed that WSJ went straight for thew financials and didn't devote a single word to that fundamental reality of human habitation.

Quaestor ayon kay ...

Typo alert: the financials. Damned fingers.

Original Mike ayon kay ...

How much water would they need just to keep the windows clean?

Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ ayon kay ...

A staggering waste of money. Not a single person I’ve met who works on Neom actually believes in it, pure cynicism all the way through. The Saudis were getting robbed, but it seemed like the Crown Prince genuinely thought this would be a good idea.

Seems that’s what happens when the person at the top has quasi-absolute power and is surrounded by sycophants.They have a terrible idea and no-one has the courage to point it out. Luckily this isn’t happening anywhere else in the world these days...

Quaestor ayon kay ...

When "The Line" was first mentioned, I immediately thought, this is some sort of mega-aqueduct connecting the Neom site with a massive underground aquifer I've never heard of that solves the water problem, but no!! It's a mega-moron's idea of a mega-city 170-kilometers long and 200 meters wide, a length to width ratio of 850 to 1. Never in history has a human habitation been built to anything close to such extremes, except once. The natural inclination is to build towns and villages in roughly circular or square layouts. This is true whether we're talking about a remote village in Papua New Guinea or Las Vegas, the more primitive the culture the rounded the site, the more sophisticated the culture the more often the square pattern dominates. When sites diverge from this pattern, it usually because of local geographic or topographic realities.

The only urban construction resembling "The Line" I can think of is the Long Walls of ancient Athens. The Long Walls was a fortification built by Athens to protect the city's communications with its dependent port city, Piraeus. It consisted mainly of two roughly parallel walls enclosing a strip of land about 8 kilometers long by 300 wide, hardly a patch on "The Line". The Long Walls failed to save Athens three times and most likely directly caused Athens to be defeated in the Peloponnesian War. It was a stupid idea, but at least 31 time less stupid than "The Line".

Quaestor ayon kay ...

"Luckily this isn’t happening anywhere else in the world these days..."

Except everywhere the ideas favors by
Indefinitely Extended Excursion hold sway.

Original Mike ayon kay ...

"Across town" is a long, long way. OTOH, you wouldn't have to worry about transferring bus lines.

Oso Negro ayon kay ...

It could have been a success, but not with the looters and moochers they hired to do it. I bid on assisting with a manufacturing-related portion of it, and I am good at what I do. You naysayers could recall that when old people say something can be done, it usually can. But they are more often wrong when they say something cannot be done. Maybe one of you smug ass geezers can tell me if you think it would have required more human effort than the Great Wall of China or the Apollo Mission. Lack of leadership in execution does not invalidate the concept. And yeah, I've worked in every country in the Middle East.

gadfly ayon kay ...

Howard believes that between the Line and LIV golf, MBS is SOL.

Not so as long as he has his bone saw and DJT.

john mosby ayon kay ...

It’s a rentier state. Pump the money out of the ground. Do whatever you want with it. No taxpayers were harmed in this exercise. Big difference from California. CC, JSM

Black Bellamy ayon kay ...

Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud should really stick to what he knows best, torturing and murdering journalists. He can have the Presidency of General Intelligence folks lay out the victims in a giant line out in the desert, it would stretch out just as long as Neom and would be a lot cheaper!

Dave Begley ayon kay ...

You mean government central planning didn’t work?

Mary Beth ayon kay ...

According to Wikipedia, "Designers of The Line announced plans to use data as a currency to manage and provide facilities such as power, waste, water, healthcare, transport and security. It was said that data would also be collected from the smartphones of the residents, their homes, facial recognition cameras and multiple other sensors."

Were they being advised by China?

At one point, Neom was announced as the host of the 2029 Asian Winter Games. (It's since been changed.) At least we know where some of the money went - to bribe Olympic officials. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Mary Beth ayon kay ...

"The natural inclination is to build towns and villages in roughly circular or square layouts."

If you watch the second video, starting at around 2:43, you'll see that the living and commercial spaces were in four-leaf clover shaped spaces along the transportation line. (Everything is a five-minute walk away!) This is not the impression of The Line that I got from the WSJ video.

All of the comments on the YouTube video are positive. (Really, really positive.) That makes me wonder how many were deleted. It's the internet. There is no 100% positivity.

Roger Sweeny ayon kay ...

Someone should tell this guy to enunciate every word and always maintain an adequate volume.

Roger Sweeny ayon kay ...

"a dance of mutual delusion"

1) Reminds me "The Best and the Brightest" where low level commanders tell the higher-ups what they want to hear, so the higher-ups keep believing that their strategy and tactics are working.

2) And the all-too-common dance of politicians and voters: "vote for me and XYZ will solve your problems." "Yes, yes, yes, tell me what I want to hear. I won't vote for someone who says, 'this is the unpleasant truth.'"

Bob Boyd ayon kay ...

Focus on camel rides and belly dancers. Get back to basics, is my advice.
I'm not a professional consultant.

Michael McNeil ayon kay ...

What directly led to the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War was Sparta traitorously allying with the Achaemenid Persian Empire against Athens. Alexander finally put paid to that continuing danger from the East.

Narr ayon kay ...

Smug-ass Geezers would be a good name for a band.

Anthony ayon kay ...

Indiana Jones: "What top western consultants?"

Crown Prince: ""Top. Western. Consultants."

Lazarus ayon kay ...

If you want to go somewhere outside of your own immediate neighborhood, it's harder to do that in a linear city than in a traditional city, and if the single transit line isn't working it's even harder. There have been "accidental" linear cities, wedged in between rivers or lakes or between mountains and the sea, but the utopian vision of great linear cities is impractical.

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