The Line, Saudi Arabia
The Line is a planned smart city in Neom, Tabuk Province, Saudi Arabia, to be housed in a single very long arcology, a linear settlement designed to have no cars, streets or carbon emissions. The project was thought up by Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who was the hands-on chair of the project.
The initial plan was for the city to span at a height of and a width of, sized to accommodate a population of 9 million. The Line was planned to have an entirely glass mirror exterior, with all basic services within a five-minute walking distance. The city is one of the five announced List of [Neom Regions|regions of Neom] and is a part of Saudi Vision 2030 project.
The plan was announced in 2021 and has persistently been criticized for unrealistic costs and timelines, environmental harms, and human rights violations. Thousands of people have been forcibly moved to make way for the project and villages have been razed. In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported on an internal audit of the megaproject which found extensive problems, including "evidence of deliberate manipulation", by the managers of the project. By 2025, the megaproject had been substantially scaled down.
Saudi Arabia stated that it aimed to complete a central segment by 2030, with completion of the full project in 2045. In 2024, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported that the first phase would only be long; Saudi officials denied this and stated that the project was continuing as planned.
In 2024, after $50 billion had been spent, the project was reported to be facing problems of large cost increases, many long delays, and a possible lack of the critical mass of inhabitants needed to make the city a modern business hub. The aim had become to complete the first half-mile section in 2034. The Wall Street Journal said that a 2023 draft board presentation estimated completion in 2080 at a cost of $8.8 trillion—25 times the annual Saudi budget—and $370 billion by 2035 for the first phase, mostly funded by the Saudi state, with the hope of later private investment.
As of the end of 2025, the project appears to have been suspended and no construction work is taking place. International media described The Line as a "likely failure".
Proposal
The Line is eventually planned to be long. It could stretch from the Red Sea to the city of Tabuk, and it could have up to nine million residents, resulting in an average population density of. By comparison, Manila, the world's most densely populated city in 2020, had a density of. The Line's design consists of two mirrored buildings with an outdoor space in between, having a total width of and a height of. This would make it the third-tallest building in the country, after the Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower and the Jeddah Tower, and approximately the 12th-tallest building in the world.The plan is for the city to be powered entirely by renewable energy. It will consist of three layers: one on the surface for pedestrians, one underground for infrastructure, and another underground for transportation. Artificial intelligence will monitor the city and use predictive and data models to find ways to improve daily life for its citizens, with residents being paid for submitting data to The Line.
The estimated building cost is US$100–200 billion, with some estimates as high as $1 trillion. It is claimed by the Saudi government that it will create 460,000 jobs, spur economic diversification, and contribute 180 billion SAR to domestic GDP by 2030. According to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2022, the first phase project is expected to cost SAR 1.2 trillion, and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund would provide half of the sum.
Alleged scaling back
In April 2024, it was reported that the project had been "scaled back" after foreign direct investment investors had not "bought into the crown prince's vision", according to Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal analyst at risk consultancy firm Maplecroft. Fluctuating global oil prices had contributed to the decision. The Line was expected to complete an initial section of in length by 2030, with a population of 300,000 rather than the intended 1.5 million.The Saudi minister of economy and planning rejected the claims of scaling back. He said in an interview during a World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh in 2024 that "For NEOM, the projects, the intended scale is continuing as planned. There is no change in scale"., Saudi Arabia intended to complete a central segment of The Line by 2030. Completion of the full project was rescheduled for 2045.
It was reported in August 2025 that Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund had written down $8 billion from major projects, including the Neom development. According to The Times, "many of the projects faced delays and cost overruns and had reportedly been scaled back." Neom faced "repeated delays" after other infrastructure projects were given priority.
On September 16, 2025, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF suspended work on the construction project until further notice.
Planning
The Line contains elements of architectural ideas from the industrial era.- In 1882, the Spanish urban planner Arturo Soria imagined a linear city based on innovative use of the tramway. He applied part of his idea to a neighborhood in Madrid, but lack of support ended the scheme.
- In the 1950s, the French architect Yona Friedman proposed the concept of an integrated, modular and vertical "spatial city" to solve the problem of urban sprawl, but the idea remained an intellectual curiosity.
- In the 1960s, the Italian avant-garde group Superstudio presented a radical artistic project: the continuous monument, "an architectural model for total urbanization," which was supposed to cover the entire Earth but without any feasibility or real utility. The proposal was a criticism of Modernism, monumentality, design and capitalism.
Construction
By October 2022, construction was under way, with excavation taking place along the entire length of the project. Saudi Arabia commissioned a SAR 700 million multi-plant concrete factory capable of producing up to 20,000 cubic meters of concrete per day. By October 2024, over 100,000 workers were preparing the initial grading, working around the clock.Architects
The project management required all architects to sign confidentiality agreements, which is why there are no references to The Line on any of their websites. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung learned that two architects had terminated their participation in the project because of human rights and ecological concerns: Norman Foster and Francine Houben from Mecanoo. The paper also reported that several high-ranking architects were still on board: David Adjaye, Ben van Berkel, Massimiliano Fuksas, the London office of the late Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, Delugan Meissl, and Wolf D. Prix from Coop Himmelb(l)au. The Süddeutsche criticized the lack of sustainability and the double standards of the architects in moral issues. In November 2024, it was announced that Delugan Meissl and Gensler had been appointed as the architects for phase one of the project.The Spine
Early plans proposed an underground railway with trains that could travel from one end of The Line to the other in 20 minutes. As of 2023, short tunnels had been dug for the start of the railway, while a train was in a prototype stage of development.Modules 40–50
By March 2023, more than 4,500 piles had been driven in module 43, reaching a peak of 60 piles per day. Piling work then shifted towards modules 45, 46 and 47, located at The Hidden Marina. Excavation of about of earth was taking place each week at the marina.The Hidden Marina
The design includes a marina, twice the size of existing marinas, on the northern side of the buildings, away from the sea. The plan calls for a tunnel and canal to be made through The Line, large enough for large cruise ships to pass through. Construction started in April 2022, aiming to open to visitors and residents by 2030. As of February 2024, over 90 million cubic metres of material had been moved.NEOM Stadium
Dewatering system
World's largest dewatering system will be built.Reception
Urban planning and environmental concerns
In an interview with Dezeen, Marshall Brown of Princeton University said that while he believed that in such large-scale urban planning, it would be difficult to achieve the slick, futuristic aesthetic seen in the concept art because of the large number of factors involved; for example, one of the images depicts a picnic on a ledge, which would probably be dangerous in real life. Hélène Chartier of C40 Cities compared The Line to other unrealised linear city projects, such as Soria's 1882 design and a 1965 proposal in New Jersey. Dutch architect Winy Maas said that while he would love to live in such an environment, its profile as seen in the concept art was monotonous, and he believed it would facilitate unfavorable wind flow through the interior.Philip Oldfield of the University of New South Wales said that the quality of life would probably come down to whether the city was well-managed, rather than to its visual flair. Oldfield said the project would have a carbon footprint of about of equivalent in the glass, steel, and concrete, because "you cannot build a building out of low-carbon materials". He said the profile would create a large-scale barrier to adjacent ecosystems and migratory species similar to that created by highways, and the mirrored exterior facade would be dangerous for birds.
Researchers from the Vienna Complexity Science Hub suggested that a circular city of a radius would have had much shorter commuting times than a linear city. The average distance between two inhabitants of a linear city would be, as opposed to for a circular city. In a linear city, each inhabitant would have only 1.2% of the population in walking distance as "people are as far away from others as possible", as opposed to 24% in a circular city. In a linear city, walking and cycling would not be popular and travel time in a fast train would be disproportionately long, while a compact circular city would allow active mobility and fast trains would not be needed. The required density in a circular city would be much lower, which would allow it to be built with existing technology, reducing the environmental footprint of buildings. A railway line disruption would immobilize a linear city, but have less impact on a circular city.
Concerns about policy and human rights
Digital rights researchers such as Vincent Mosco have suggested that the city's data collection scheme could make it a "surveillance city", because of arrangements that would distort consent to sharing data, and because Saudi Arabia's poor human rights record might imply potential misuse of data. Neom CEO Joseph Bradley said that the Neom coordinators were resolving privacy issues and that Saudi Arabia had a personal data protection law.Aside from the merits of the projected city, there was also scrutiny of the actions of the Saudi government in pursuing the project. In October 2022, three men of the Howeitat tribe, Shadli, Ibrahim, and Ataullah al-Huwaiti, were sentenced to death when they refused to vacate their village as part of the NEOM project. Shadli al-Huwaiti was the brother of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who was shot dead by security forces in April 2020 in his home in Al-Khariba, in the part of Tabuk province earmarked for NEOM, after he posted videos on social media opposing the displacement of local residents to make way for the project. In response to reports of human rights violations, one company, Solar Winds, pulled out of the project in 2022.