The Trillion Dollar Dream Nightmare City

In late October of 2017, the twenty seven year old leader of Saudi Arabia, powerful but still widely unrecognised, stood on a small stage with an even smaller audience, giving what seemed like an ordinary speech. Some thought he was going to clarify his agenda. Others believed he was there to prove his dominance. These people would have all been correct, except nobody would be able to predict the unprecedented scale and ambition he would implement this to.

He started off his speech like all of the leaders that had come before him, explaining the major advancements of human civilization ever since the 18th century. He then pulled out two phones, one of them an Apple 1 and the other the newest Apple Iphone. His promise was to transform this nation out of its confined oil-based economy. He was looking for something bigger, something that man had never thought of, let alone attempted to do before. At that moment, the whole world felt a shiver of cold rush down their body. Some were fearful, but many more felt a surge of hope, realizing that this young man could be the one to turn the page and usher in a new chapter, one that completely got rid of Saudi’s sustainability fears. He promised a future   filled with unparalleled success, glory, … and money.

Part 1:  Shoot for the Stars

Mohammed Bin Salman was the son of King Salman’s half-brother’s nephew, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Growing up, he always fostered a vivid imagination, often obsessing over sci-fi movies like Star Wars, Marvel, and Star-Trek. His mindset was extremely liberal, often getting his inspiration from western countries. However, his ideas weren’t without backlash. He implemented several controversial policies, like allowing women to work for the first time in Saudi’s ninety-four year history, and investing in foreign companies in order to diversify their profits. MBS’s most headlined move occurred in 2025, when he announced he was going to buy Electronic Arts, the multi-billion dollar gaming company. These moves were all part of his massive, revolutionary plan called Vision 2030. This includes all of the policies above, along with mostly everything covered in the next few pages. The goal of this vision was to move the country away from an oil-dependent country into a green, futuristic, and sustainable economy.

In March 2017, the past leader, Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, was removed from office due to a drug addiction problem. Fending off around 500 other suitors, MBS received government approval to be crowned. Following his coronation, he did not waste any time announcing the most radical and ambitious plan in Saudi history, and possibly in the history of the world.

At the headline for MBS’s Vision 2030 plans was a city so futuristic, so glamorous, and so unprecedented that he promised this would usher in a new era in human history. It was a city called NEOM. According to the NEOM website, there were almost two thousand initial name ideas for this new city. After long discussion, the list narrowed down to around five ideas, which included “NEOVIAmbs and NMBS”. The board then decided to come up with a more catchy name, combining “neo”, the greek word for new, and an “m” from the first letter of mustaqbal, meaning future.

NEOM features several crazy feats of human engineering, with each one being more absurd than the next. The main building, the one that gathered all the media attention worldwide, would be called “The Line”. The Line was essentially two glass-coated buildings, each one 170 miles long and 1,600 feet wide. To scale, that is longer than the whole length of Massachusetts! The buildings would be stacked parallel to each other, and would provide all the amenities that a regular city would have. Furthermore, The Line itself includes an international airport, along with another bay airport for the overall NEOM city. The graphic rendering of The Line portrayed two cities living perfectly in harmony, covered in lush greenery everywhere you step. And if that wasn’t enough, MBS promised a self-sufficient cooling system to protect it from the desert heat, as it is isolated in the deserted northwestern area of Saudi Arabia. What is most preposterous about this promise is that MBS, along with other officials, have estimated the total cost of this ultra-futuristic city would round up to one trillion dollars. While that may seem like an eye-watering sum of money, it was actually pretty low considering the sheer craziness of this idea.

As if this was not ambitious enough, MBS went on to unveil the three other cities/zones surrounding The Line. Sindalah Island, the only completed part of NEOM as of 2025, is a shimmering island sitting on the edge of the Red Sea. It is completely manmade, filled with luxury resorts, and premium nature themed attractions. It comes complete with a U-shaped marina intended to harbor yachts and super-yachts, and a truly stunning golf course in the center. As of today, the island is almost fully operational, and the only current area of NEOM in use. Obviously this experience will come at a great price and is only reserved for a small population of the ultra rich, presenting a new problem of getting enough people to visit the island.

On the opposite side of the region, another preposterous idea is turning into reality. As if building a whole island of beaches wasn’t enough, the Saudi government decided to essentially make a massive refrigerator in the middle of the desert, with its own artificial snow and climate fully constructed by engineers. Trojena is a stunning man-made ski resort, with interconnecting steel slopes covered in artificial snow, designed to give skiers a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Its structure is unlike any other ski slope in the world; there are several metal slide-like slopes that interconnect with each other, providing a novel experience to skiers of all levels. Its construction is also steadily moving ahead, as it must be completely finished by 2029 to host the Asian Winter games. However, there is a very large risk it will not be fully operational by that relatively short due date, and the committee is already considering other options, secretly conversing with China to replace NEOM if all doesn’t come to plan. In the summit, luxury hotels and a massive metal lake jutting out of the mountain coat the Jebel Al Lawz mountain, the highest point in the whole of NEOM. At the core of this resort is a building called The Vault. It is a shimmering luxury mall that includes dozens of shops and several hotels, highlighting the brilliance (or profanity) put into making this groundbreaking resort 2,000 meters up in the sky.

Finally, the most overlooked but still important section of NEOM, is Oxagon. If The Line showcases innovation, Sindalah highlights the culture, and Trojena underscores the adventure, Oxagon drives the industry in NEOM, almost like Saudi Arabia’s very own Silicon valley. It is a floating port harboring the Red Sea, consisting of many islands clustered together, forming the shape of an octagon. There is a port for ships to pass through, and boasts an extremely advanced and sustainable infrastructure. If this all works out, Oxagon’s format could be the blueprint for future cities, or a lesson for what went wrong.

As you are reading all of this, you might have wondered, is this actually possible? MBS came out with a revolutionary dream, hoping to turn it into a reality. But as work progresses, and the budget settles in, he slowly realises that money isn’t infinite, and there will be a bottom of the bag. As the days slowly pass by, cracks are starting to form, some uncontrollable, but a lot of it due to the lack (or ignorance) of common sense used in this project. As we dig deeper, we start to uncover the harsh consequences that occur when we shoot past the stars, and face reality.

Part 2: Facade

The total NEOM project was originally meant to only cost around 1.6 trillion dollars. That seems like a staggeringly large amount of cash. However, if you consider all the additions mentioned above, 1.6 trillion would barely be enough to cover half, without any wasted money or setbacks to the plan. Surely someone with common sense would be able to tell, but the culture in Saudi Arabia made the advisors reluctant to tell MBS what he didn’t want to hear. Many CEOs resigned from the NEOM project after they saw the estimates, but nonetheless, MBS forged ahead. Many stubborn and blind decisions are made because the people in the top were scared of the humiliation and pushback that they would experience from critics if the project were to fail. This made underestimating the true cost very common; the financers often had to correct the costs for themselves. This led to much confusion between Western consultants and Arabian workers on what the true costs were.

The royal government hired an unusually large amount of finance and engineering consultants for this project, around hundreds of millions of dollars. They weren’t there to make decisions, but rather to cover up the leaders’ dignity in case the project fails. These consultants had to drive all the way to an empty desert, coated in unbearable heat, where they were usually met with small rooms for their homes. The work was tiring and uncomfortable, as they were in a new environment most have never experienced before. At the epicenter of all the problems, there is one man, the CEO of NEOM. He is Naadmi Al-Nasr, an impetuous but successful leader known for getting what he wanted through brute force, even when it meant death. According to a NEOM educator named Tony Harris, in an interview by the Wall Street Journal, the second he was introduced, “he was having a tantrum on the floor… admonishing people for not working hard enough.”

Additionally, the planners were given a large sum of money, but were forced to spend as fast as they could. Shockingly, the most important way that MBS calculated his progress was based on the amount of money spent in a time period, instead of what was actually getting done. Everybody there made sure to dry up their budget as fast as possible, although it usually wasn’t possible, for fear of arousing Al-Nasr. The former head of technology Andy Wirth reported that in a meeting, Naadmi warned them,”if you don’t spend your budget, you will be brought to the founding board to explain why.” He said in this same Wall Street Journal interview that he was supposed to spend around six to seven million dollars in that year. This wasteful quantity over substance mindset was one of the main reasons why the budget ballooned from 1 trillion dollars to around 8.8 trillion dollars as of 2025. That is the equivalent to more than three times the GDP of all of Africa. Many of the people at the head of this project resigned for these reasons.

Surprisingly, the consultants had it pretty good compared to the struggling laborers that were sent there. They were sent from places from all over the world, like India and Nepal. In a recording, Al-Nasr was heard telling his workers, “I drive my workers like slaves. When they drop dead, I celebrate.” He surely got to celebrate his full potential because according to the Architect’s Newspaper, over 21,000 migrants have died building NEOM. In the official records, these deaths are unexplained, but the oppressive leadership mentality of Naadmi Al-Nasr, combined with the already difficult challenge of working in an inhabited desert paints a pretty clear picture explaining why so many fatalities were recorded. Additionally, the environment in NEOM has gone dark: not only is it abandoned, but where it is inhabited, gangs and criminals fester along the site. In 2024, Naadami Al-Nasr was officially relieved of his duties, resigning as CEO, potentially marking the beginning of the end of this promised utopia. NEOM has announced that, “employees are its top priority, and are provided a healthy and safe environment."

NEOM was largely uninhabited in the northwest region of Saudi Arabia, except for several indigenous communities living in it. Because of this project, native tribes were all displaced, forced out of their homes, given no choice on what they could do.  Environmentalists have also voiced out their concern on all the birds that would suffer from The Line. Just like how birds slam into the windows of houses, this will happen to birds flying through there, but on a much larger scale, solely because of its mirrored walls. Furthermore, all of the wind farms in that area would lose their revenue, due to the sheer height and length of The Line blocking wind coming from both sides. Neom’s Trojena project has also heavily damaged the pristine and mostly untouched landscape of the Saudi mountains, as the high amount of explosives used have ruined a large portion of the scenery there. The craziest part is that the mountain that was used for Trojena, was actually the lands on which MBS roamed on during his youth. To completely ruin the nature in the same mountain you grew up in, it proved to others that MBS was so passionate about his golden child, that he was willing to give up his childhood. However, he has still to let go of his gullible, naive child-like mindset. One that doesn’t allow criticism, one that lets his dreams take priority over reality, dismissing common sense until the final moment.

Today in The Line, the site has an obvious blueprint, with the groundwork being set, but there are no construction machines; and workers are gone. They have promised to finish the high-speed train system by 2026, although there seems to be nothing that shows progress. No matter what happens, one thing seems sure: MBS will never give up. He will keep on pushing on, until every brick is placed, and every system is in operation. He will keep surging on, even if it means the downfall of his beloved country.

Part 3: Backfired

Many things went wrong in this project that was, at times, doomed for destruction. We could take away hundreds of key points from this story, but the root cause of this was all due to the philosophy. MBS and the government believed that they themselves, with a trillion dollars of seemingly bottomless cash and resources, could defy the basic laws of architecture, finance, and even common sense. MBS’s unwillingness to ruin his reputation and the competitive culture in the Saudi Arabian government allowed him to proceed with such impossible tasks, with even his closest advisors masking their criticism from within. This is a stark example of those who try to beat the system, for those who try to skimp on the fundamentals. The Line, Mohammed Bin Salmans’ golden promise, was left in ruins. Abandoned for all to see. Of course, there are still many projects that are completed and will stand atop the world’s greatest advancements. This will be a lesson, a warning for future cities, of what happens when you put creativity over common sense. They tried to push the limits of human ability, and in turn, got thrown down from the heavens back into reality.