Satellite images show progress at world’s biggest construction site

In the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia, construction is underway on a megaproject that promises to one day house more people than New York City, spread across a vertical skyscraper taller than the Empire State Building and stretching the length of Manhattan to Philadelphia.

New satellite imagery provided to Newsweek shows the state of progess at Neom, the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the kingdom is pitching as the future of urban living. The image below, captured by Maxar satellites, shows one of the few completed parts of the project: a lush golf course overlooking the Red Sea.

A closer look shows the course surrounded by mega-mansions and palaces, complete with a helipad and beachfront access.

Several miles north, excavation work has been progressing in fits and starts on The Line, the flagship element of the Neom project that bills itself as the largest construction project on Earth, and among the most controversial. The 650-foot-wide “linear city” will stretch across 105 miles through mountains and desert valleys, with the ability to house some nine million people by the time it’s completed — at an estimated cost of up to $2 trillion.

But work on The Line has already stalled, according to recent reports, due to spiraling costs and problems with the unique demands of its engineering and construction.

The Saudis originally planned to open the first 10-mile chunk by the end of the decade to coincide with Vision 2030, the kingdom’s ambitious initiative to diversify its economy away from oil. Those plans have since been scaled back to a 1.5-mile first phase, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Even that would make the structure the world’s biggest building by far.

The controversies swirling around Neom are plenty: critics say it’s overambitious, impractical, too expensive even for the Saudis, and even if completed would cater only to the super-rich. This week, the BBC reported that Saudi security forces were given the green light to use “lethal force” to clear land for The Line’s eventual construction. At least one villager has reportedly been shot and killed for protesting against the eviction.

Newsweek reached out to the Neom team for an update on the state of construction but did not receive a response.

For his part, bin Salman, the ruler of Saudi Arabia and the megaproject’s biggest champion, has compared it to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and a critical part of his larger vision of turning the kingdom into a tech-focused, diversified economy rather than one of the world’s largest petrostates.

In addition to The Line, the Neom project includes what it hopes will be luxury entertainment destinations that will boost tourism to the kingdom. One element is Sindalah, marketed as a “luxury island destination” in the Red Sea. The island is expected to be the “first physical showcase of Noem to open to the world,” according to Antoni Vives, chief urban development and islands officer at Neom.

Another area, named Trojena, is home to some of the biggest mountains in the country and will offer alpine and adventure sports, including 22 miles of ski slopes.

A “cosmopolitan marina community” called Jaumur, on the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, will host over 6,000 residents and a research institute for oceanographic research and a boarding school.

About 2,800 staff already live and work at Neom, according to its website. So far, the project has been funded exclusively by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as PIF, that oversees $700 billion. But Neom’s official budget is $500 billion, more than half the PIF’s holdings. And even executives working on the project told the Journal that number is unrealistic, with the first 1.5-mile phase of The Line alone expected to cost some $100 billion.

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