The Failure of the “Line” in NEOM (Saudi Arabia): Why the “15-Minute City” Stuck at the Limits of Physics and Nature

The Financial Times investigation shows how the Saudi vision for a 193-kilometer-long city of mirrors has clashed with enormous costs, engineering challenges and ecological constraints in the era of the climate crisis.

By Karin Klosterman, Green Prophet website

Dreaming big is good. It gives us a goal to aim for. But declaring projects “sustainable” before they’ve even been truly tested is a trap that architects should not fall into. For years, the Saudi vision of “The Line” has been marketed as the future of sustainable urban living: a 193-mile-long city of mirrors, cutting through the desert. No cars. No emissions. Everything within five minutes. A “climate-friendly” city built from the ground up.

But now, according to an extensive investigation by the Financial Times, “The Line” has collided head-on with things that no ambition can circumvent: physics, money, and ecological reality.

When the vision meets the feasibility test

According to the FT report, which is based on interviews with more than 20 architects, engineers and former managers, the project began to unravel under the weight of its internal contradictions. The interviewees spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of lawsuits. According to the writer, a quick search of PR materials allows us to identify which of the parties was willing to “take the money” and try to breathe life into a project that she describes as stupid.

The costs of the “eco-city” have ballooned into the trillions. Engineering assumptions have failed basic stress tests. And foreign investment has not arrived at the scale Saudi planners had hoped for.

One former architect said he warned management that a 30-story building, hanging “upside down” over a marina, could become a “pendulum”: swaying, gaining momentum, and eventually crashing into the marina. Another described a sewage system that needed hundreds of shuttle vehicles to move sewage “up” because gravity didn’t work as it did in the fantasy of a vertical city. Even flushing a toilet became a design problem. The author compares this to the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates, where, she says, sewage trucks are required for daily evacuation.

At the center of “The Line” and the Neom project was Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. His vision, according to promises, was intended to catapult the kingdom beyond oil and toward a post-carbon future. But the investigation, according to the original text, shows how opposition was rejected, timetables were set for political considerations, and feasibility studies were often replaced with simulations.

Green on paper, fragile beneath the surface

Even in terms of the climate crisis, the problems are deeper. According to the FT, building the first 20 modules of the “Halline” would require more cement each year than France produces, and up to 60% of the global production capacity of “green steel.” It’s a stark reminder that “green” raw materials are not infinite. The author adds that slate is certainly not a sustainable building material. When one project disrupts global supply chains, promises of sustainability ring hollow.

Urban planners have been warning for years that megaprojects fail not because of a lack of technology, but because they ignore human behavior and ecological limits. Urbanist Jane Jacobs once argued that cities thrive through cumulative complexity and gradual growth, not through total control. “The Line” attempted the opposite: a sealed, pre-planned world with no room for organic development.

Ecologists have raised more red flags. Bird migration experts, quoted by BirdLife International, have warned that the Wall of Mirrors could become a mass collision hazard for millions of birds along the East Africa-West Asia flyway. Even solutions such as markings on glass will not realistically solve this, they say.

A pattern we've already seen in the desert

This is not the first time that a futuristic city in the desert has promised sustainability and delivered disruption. The author cites examples such as Egypt’s new administrative capital that got stuck, or China’s “eco-cities” that didn’t fill up with people. The lesson is repeated: Cities are living systems, not machines.

In contrast to “The Line,” she presents Masdar in Abu Dhabi, which developed gradually, at an uneven pace, and in a less total process. Green Prophet covered Masdar from the very beginning, including the first 500 homes. She says they were there and saw the show.

The FT notes that Saudi Arabia has already spent over $50 billion, and that much of the construction has been slowed or frozen. The writer adds a harsh claim that residents of nearby villages have been killed or arrested for life imprisonment, and some are, she claims, on death row. What remains are vast foundations, dug-up desert, displaced communities, and a scaled-down ambition that no longer resembles the original vision.

The failure of “The Line” is not a failure of imagination, writes Klosterman. It is a failure of restraint and of the Western architects and planners who agreed to participate in the show. Who holds these firms accountable? According to her, this is the kind of project that the UN could have raised a flag against and challenged.

A future resilient to the climate crisis will not be built in a single, monumental gesture, but by rehabilitating existing cities, restoring ecosystems, and working with the land, not against it. The most sustainable city is often not the one that seems most radical in the visualization.

This is how one urban expert put it, according to the FT: “As a thought experiment, great. But don’t build thought experiments.”

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• The first robot received citizenship - in Saudi Arabia
• 8 million years ago, the Arabian Peninsula was green: Fossils and caves change the history of human migration
• Iran examines water imports and warns against evacuation Tehran: Water crisis worsens
• Egyptian environmental activists are fighting a plan to build a bridge from Sinai to Saudi Arabia
• Desertification of the Middle East as a result of the Climate Crisis will lead to wars