NEOM – Dystopian Dream or City of the Future?

By: Tanner Hall

Lexington — Among the cities in the Middle East, Dubai stands alone. Maybe due to its Lamborghini police cars or its claim to the tallest building in the world, it is one of the most visited cities on the planet. However, it may soon have a Middle Eastern rival to its domination in the tourism industry.

For the past three decades, countries around the world have been attempting to replicate its blueprint in the hopes of generating the tourism dollars Dubai brings in for the United Arab Emirates.

The Dubai Effect has begun making its way to other parts of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is now planning out a Dubai of their own, a city called NEOM.

A portmanteau coming from the Latin word “neo” meaning new and the Arabic word “mustaqbal” meaning future, NEOM is Saudi’s endeavor to imitate the touristic success that the Emirates have witnessed from Dubai.

However, NEOM and Saudi Arabia are seeking to take the Dubai blueprint and expand upon it even more. The city is expected to cost over $500 billion and span 26,502 kilometers on the coast of the Red Sea — a land mass slightly smaller than Belgium.

Saudi Arabia is expecting that NEOM will set a new world standard for what we know to be a city. The city is strategically located to provide access to beaches on the coast of the Red Sea, surrounding sand dunes, and the mountainous regions in the north.

In order to attract visitors, NEOM will include a zoo of robotic dinosaurs, an artificial moon that will shine at night, cloud-seeding technology to produce more rain than naturally possible, and a driverless taxi service.

However, NEOM is an extremely ambitious project for several reasons.

Saudi Arabia is still not up to times when it comes to their acceptance of people from other cultures. Despite progress towards social liberalization under the reign of Mohammad Bin Salman with the loosening laws on women driving, cinemas, and male guardianship, Saudi Arabia is still lagging behind.

These legislative changes are small steps in the right direction, but the lack of social liberalism is still a glaring concern for tourists and a crucial hitch for Saudi’s investment efforts.

*Computer constructed rendition of Neom’s potential design plan. (Cr: R.E. Kearney)*

Since the announcement of NEOM in 2017, Saudi Arabia has created more roadblocks for this project that only exacerbate the problems that still exist. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a former Washington Post columnist and notable Saudi dissident, has been a huge issue for the kingdom’s attempts at modernization, and specifically the NEOM project.

The country has also come under fire for running prisons that specifically incarcerate women who have disowned their male guardians.

Taking into account both the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and a stubbornly conservative society, it’s clear that Saudi’s attempts at increasing tourism are not going to be without setbacks and, eventually, compromise.

This project comes in a larger strategic plan to shy away from the country’s dependence on oil money. The Saudi Vision 2030 project, a set of 96 objectives aiming to improve quality of life, diversify the economy, and create a more “vibrant society” was announced in April of 2016.

In addition to their poor track record of social liberalism, Saudi Arabia has a history of attempting to build megacities as well. In 2005, Saudi Arabia announced six megacity projects that it planned to build. Out of those six plans, only one of them, King Abdullah Economic City, was actually built to completion.

Even now, 15 years later, KAEC is struggling to find people to live there, as it’s home to only 7,000 people despite the Saudi Arabian government claiming it wants 2 million people to live there by 2035.

However, NEOM promises to be different, as it’s being considered a special economic zone, or SEZ, that will abide by a different set of rules than the rest of Saudi Arabia. These different norms will encourage secularity, a suitable environment for globalism, and foreign investment.

Despite this, the city is still expected to be under heavy government surveillance, which begs us to ask how free MBS will allow NEOM to be, and to what degree dissidence will be tolerated.

All things considered, social liberalization and a regeneration of trust from the global community are going to prove key for the future success of Saudi and its tourism. Not robotic dinosaurs.