Work has begun on a 120 km long metropolis in Saudi Arabia. Footage from The Line: Drone shows excavators digging the foundations for the £440bn project. The Daily Mail writes about it.
The clip was released by Ot Sky, an aerial photography company, and shows diggers at a training ground in Saudi Arabia.
The site is 120 km long and is being built within the Neom development, a large desert complex.
Neom will also have an artificial ski resort and an octagonal port city, as well as elevators and robots.
The project was launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and will form part of the vast Neom desert complex, which also promises to build an artificial ski resort, an octagonal port city on the water, elevators, robots and artificial intelligence to service the grand new complex. Also, the vertical skyscraper “Line” will have a port for ocean liners.
Photo: Instagram Discover Neom
It is planned to create an underground transport system under the entire city in the desert.
The metropolis, which can accommodate up to nine million people, was announced earlier this year. Critics were not convinced by the large-scale presentation and doubted that construction would begin at all, but workers are already working on the foundation.
The large-scale project is planned to be completed by 2030.
Neom’s executive director of urban planning, Tarek Kaddumi, said The Line aims to ‘revolutionize the way we live today’.
The design plans for the vertical mirrored skyscraper show that it will have an artificial river flowing through it, and the walls will be decorated with vertical gardens and parks. Electricity will be obtained from renewable energy sources.
Photo: Instagram Discover Neom
Ibn Salman said he wanted his country to have a construction project as iconic and timeless as the Egyptian pyramids.
‘The Line is a project that is a civilizational revolution that puts people first,’ he said.
But The Line, which will consist of two buildings almost half a kilometer high, will run parallel to each other through 120 kilometers of desert, mountains, and coast.
Salman also hopes that the Neom project will create thousands of new jobs overall and allow the oil-rich country to stop relying on resources for its wealth.
However, no foreign investment is expected in Neom, as many Western countries continue to boycott the country due to human rights violations. Salman is accused of ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, but the crown prince has denied involvement.
Environmental planning experts also criticize the project. They believe that the very size and length of the ‘Mirror Line’ will disrupt the routes of migratory birds.
