Headline so vague it could refer to any of like 5 different projects in the region.
Edit: It’s talking about NEOM’s The Line.
It was a dumb idea anyway
All of them are dumb. And any architect or planner involved has to have realised that within hours. That leaves no morally sound room for their involvement and must be the main reason most of them deleted any reference of their involvement they could.
The warning is “if you announce a facially bullshit project people will temporarily act like it’s real”
The project was always dumb. The way you do it, is to have one large project in the new city center to grab headlines and create a symbol for the city. The rest should be cheaper lower end buildings. NEOM is just the expensive mega projects, without the normal construction.The simple truth is that Saudi Arabia has just such a project with the King Abdullah Economic City, with what is planned to be the tallest building in the world. The issue is that Saudi Arabia just can not be a playground for the super rich. There are just not enough of them to make it work.
Oh fuck off. This thing was always a joke. It’s not “utopian,” it’s a sultan’s vanity project.
One building, the size of a country, arranged as inefficiently as possible, is not even an “urban megaproject.” It’s a one-dimensional suburb.
