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Saudi Arabia's plans for bizarre desert cities

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GIDORI - Saudi Arabia’s plans for building bizarre cities in the desert are becoming more unhinged

Dangling glass boxes, monolithic pyramids, lush gardens. What else will Neom come up with?
Saudi Arabia’s plans for building bizarre cities in the desert are becoming more unhinged


BY GRACE SNELLING 2 MINUTE READ



GIDORI - A new announcement video

for its latest endeavor—a “flagship golf community” in Saudi Arabia call Gidori—opens on a shot of a woman playing a dramatic violin solo in the desert, decked out in a flowing gown and surrounded by mirrors on all sides. The video gets a lot more eyebrow-raising from there: renderings of a reflective city hanging from a giant slab, a futuristic golf cart, and some wacky AI glasses are just a few of the scenes to come.


[Rendering: Neom]
This is par for the course for Neom, a special economic zone in Saudi Arabia that’s owned and supported by the country’s public investment fund. Neom describes itself as a “new future” built to “redefine business, livability, and conservation” that will benefit generations to come, but the lion’s share of its promotional content appears suspiciously geared for the ultra-rich.


While perhaps best known for stirring up a healthy dose of controversy with its dystopian city The Line (and its accompanying reports of human rights violations), Neom has spent the past several years showing off renderings of increasingly unbelievable development projects, all while remaining notably vague on the progress of its current endeavors.


Concept image of The Line. [Rendering: Neom]
These include Trojena, a $500 billion luxury mountain resort, Oxagan, a “center for advanced and clean industries” that’s billed as the (future) world’s largest floating structure, and Sindalah, a sparkling island resort in the Red Sea.


Concept image for The Line. [Rendering: Neom]
So far, Neom has announced 10 projects in the Gulf of Aqaba region, all of which look and sound like something out of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune—or perhaps the next set for the Max show The White Lotus.

Xaynor, a members-only beach club, will be complete with a series of pools, restaurants, and a spa. Javier Sordo Madaleno de Haro, partner at Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos, told Dezeen that Xaynor will “attract a unique community of the most fascinating people in the world.” And the aforementioned golf resort, Gidori, will be “a series of spaces offering points of connection between humans and nature,” according to architect Ignacio Gomez in a recent YouTube video. It seems safe to assume that the glass apartments hanging from a giant outcropping in the sand (aptly named “The Monolith”) will be one of those points of connection.


[Screenshot: Neom]
Commenters on the video have their doubts. While a few were excited by the prospect, others said that the graphic designers of Gidori must be working more than the engineers, and that the resort resembles the tip of a Star Wars Imperial Destroyer.


[Screenshot: Neom]
But the greater share of public vitriol is being directed at a video listed to Neom’s YouTube on February 26, titled “THE LINE In Progress.” The video gives very little in the way of a substantive progress report besides positing that an undefined first phase of The Line will be complete in 2030 and that “millions of cubic meters of earth and water are being moved per week.” Viewers were quick to point out the hypocrisy of that statement in light of the later claim that The Line will be “a sustainable city with zero emissions.”

VIDEO GIDORI NEOM present 2

One commenter wrote that “Exploring this place when it is inevitably abandoned is going to be amazing.” A more hopeful supporter mused, “A really interesting, ambitious, and incredible project that I’m very excited about developing and I really hope for Saudi Arabia that it all works out and is successful and doesn’t become one of the biggest and most expensive flops in history.” One can dream.