The Middle East was at the centre of civilisation during the Bronze age, connecting trade from East to West in an integrated web of roads and ports, later being dubbed as the ‘silk roads’. The touch of global trade could be witnessed in the hanging gardens of Babylon, echoing in the Library of Alexandria, through the chatter of pilgrims in the port of Jeddah and the chinks of merchant shipping within the cities of antiquity stretching up the Levant. The region once again is speckled with modern global cities, with the three pearls Dubai, Doha and Manama lighting up the Persian Gulf, Muscat watching over the Gulf of Oman and Cairo sprawling across the Nile. However, with cities building upwards on the funding of Petro-Dollars and nation-states looking to diversify their revenue streams, Saudi Arabia is building a new city in the sand; NEOM.
The name itself points to its ambition, stemming from the Ancient Greek prefix for ‘new’ and Mostaqbal for ‘future’. This is in the same shade that Odesa and Sevastopol were built in the image of the Ancient Greeks, conjuring up imagery of civilisation and progression. Ultimately, the city will become the central place for science, technology, start-ups and will provide a breeding ground for future industries and ideas. The emerging city is also strategically positioned, with its location being accessible to 70% of the world population in just an 8-hour flight and intersects one of the world’s busiest trade routes. The city itself has been allocated US $500 billion out of the Public Investment Fund (Saudi’s Sovereign Wealth Fund), with $100 – 200 billion to be spent on infrastructure alone. The project is expected to generate 380,000 jobs and an expected US $48 billion to the kingdom’s GDP (ORF 2021). Unconventionally, NEOM has been designed to be a 170 km linear city, allowing it to be human-centred and with a width that will be walkable in 5 minutes. Additionally, NEOM or ‘the line’ will be a semi-autonomous city, designated as a free-trade zone with its own tax structure and independent legal system. As well as this, the city will be carbon neutral, zipping with the newest clean technology and bio-inspired streets. NEOM’s infrastructure will be constructed in three layers, the top being pedestrianised above ground, the second being below for physical infrastructure and the third acting as the spinal cord for high-speed and transport. Therefore, the city will be integrated with state-of-the-art facilities, allowing it to be digitally integrated and will utilise the newest breakthroughs in high-speed transport. In truth, the Kingdom’s vision for the city of the future is unparalleled and if successful could be a blueprint that could be exported globally.
NEOM will be the flagship for Saudi Arabia’s drive to pivot from an oil-based economy to a thriving hub for modern industries. NEOM will be the lance that super-charges Saudi-Arabia in becoming a global economy, open to Tourism, global trade and emerging industries. In context, other nations in the region are also implementing ambitious strategies to pivot their economies, like Bahrain’s Economic vision 2030, Oman vision 2040 and Qatar’s national vision 2030. Justifiably, NEOM is just one high-profile example of the region pivoting to the knowledge economy, positioning the region to lead the way in future industries, rather than continuing to rely on extracting fossilised organisms.
To summarise, NEOM is an ambitious project lending itself to the future world economy. The city itself is unconventional, green, open for business and with a strong human-centred focus. However, it is one piece of the wave of modernization projects being implemented across the META region. If successful, the Middle East may once again find itself at the centre of the world, acting as the crossroads between the East and West.
By Henri Willmott