The desert mirage that swallowed 50 billion dollars

Saudi Arabia's ambitious future city project 'The Line' is facing a serious crisis. The plan, which was announced in 2021 to accommodate 9 million people in a 170 km long mirror-surface linear city, has now entered a phase of halting construction, writing off $8 billion in losses from the sovereign wealth fund, and re-examining the strategy on what can be saved by 2030.

According to related reports, on September 16, 2025, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) suspended construction of The Line indefinitely. Of the planned 170km section, only 2.4km of foundation work has actually been completed. The population plan, which was aimed at 1.5 million residents by 2030, has been lowered to less than 300,000, and the section to be completed within 10 years is expected to be just over 2km.

The potential of an innovative vision

The Line's design philosophy began with serious criticism of existing urban planning. The problem was that traditional cities centered on roads and horizontal expansion consume more land, energy, and resources than necessary, fragmenting the natural ecosystem.

The proposed alternative was a single continuous structure 170 km long, 200 m wide, and 500 m high. It was a three-dimensional urban structure that accommodated 9 million people in an area of ​​34㎢ and grew the city vertically and internally, building up multiple ‘ground surfaces’ in layers. Each level functions as an independent walk-friendly neighborhood, designed so that residents can reach schools, medical facilities, parks, and workplaces within a five-minute radius.

Tarek Kadumi, head of NEOM line design, described this as a ‘five-minute sphere’ accessibility concept. A high-speed railway that runs through the entire structure connects both ends within 30 minutes, and a separate logistics line handles industrial cargo underground. The designers named this model 'Zero Gravity Urbanism' and presented it with internationally renowned architects and urban theorists at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Discussion that began with the failure of urban planning in the 20th century

The vision presented by The Line deserves serious discussion among architects and urban thinkers who have witnessed the failure of city construction in the 20th century. The concept of a city freed from automobiles and existing road infrastructure, and a space designed to coexist with the surrounding natural landscape, was an extension of the long-standing discourse on sustainable cities.

At the time of the closing of the Line exhibition in Riyadh in 2023, this vision was considered credible and attractive. But after the exhibition, The Line began to clash with the laws of physics, political structures, and a harsh financial system. After years of excessive ambition and accumulated skepticism, the project was drastically scaled back.

Uncomfortable questions facing the architectural world

At least $50 billion has been invested to date, and half-finished construction sites are scattered throughout the desert. The overseas investment expected by the project did not materialize. Internal audits and a series of project shutdowns across the NEOM portfolio further exposed the gap between what was presented to the design community and what was feasible.

Related reports and records of NEOM's official communications raise questions that the architectural community must respond to. What does a radical reassessment of The Line’s status quo reveal? It is about the design profession's relationship with power, spectacle, frustration, and ambitious urban visions.

Future outlook [AI analysis]

The Line's setback is likely to mark a major turning point in the global architecture community's approach to megaprojects. First, the verification of technical and financial feasibility of state-led mega-city projects is expected to become more stringent.

Second, discussions on the ethical dilemmas architects and urban planners face when participating in ambitious projects of authoritarian regimes are likely to intensify. It appears that the discourse on what standards experts should set between the innovativeness of the vision and the problematic nature of the implementation context will expand.

Third, paradoxically, the core questions raised by The Line—vertical city, car-free city, city coexisting with nature—are still valid. There is a possibility that these ideas can be reinterpreted and applied on a more realistic scale and context. It is a pattern that has been repeated in the history of urban planning that the conceptual legacy left behind by failed mega projects is dispersed, leading to small-scale experiments around the world.