SAUDI Arabia plans to build an £800 billion sideways skyscraper, 75 miles long, which will house five million people, according to the desert kingdom.
The gigantic project – called the Mirror Line because it will be made of mirror glass – will be about the size of Massachusetts and taller than the Empire State Building – if construction continues.
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Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled plans for the gigantic edifice in January 2021 with the aim of creating its own version of the Kingdom, the Pyramids of Egypt.
But planners question the project’s price tag and whether people would be attracted to living in a confined space after the pandemic.
Prince bin Salman continues the boondoggle notion that he has branded a “civilization revolution that puts people first.”
The line becomes part of a desert city called the Neom and will consist of two 1,600-foot-tall buildings running parallel to each other in the desert and taking 50 years to construct.
It will take so long for engineers to need struts to account for the curvature of the Earth, and it will have its own high-speed railway and marina.
The gigantic complex is expected to run from the Gulf of Aqaba in the west of the country, through a mountain range and into a desert “aerotropolis”, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The slick building – which will be coated in a silver sheen – will have a total travel time of approximately 20 minutes and will be powered by renewable energy.
It will also have miles of greenery and homes and farms of its own to feed the more than five million residents expected to fill it.
Residents must have a subscription to access three meals a day.
Prince MBS maintains that the building will be carbon neutral and will have its own stadium 300 meters above the ground.
The prince hopes The Neom will create thousands of new jobs and free the country from its reliance on the oil and gas sector to fill the state treasury.
International funding for the castle in the air project has so far struggled to get off the ground as countries boycott Saudi Arabia over its alleged human rights violations.
Human rights activists have called on Western companies to boycott the development because of the human rights situation in the kingdom, especially since the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.
Khashoggi was killed in the Turkish city’s Saudi embassy before his body was dismembered in a crime condemned by world leaders
The prince denies any involvement.
Neom’s development has also resulted in local tribes being forcibly removed from the area, reports say.
“It is definitely a disaster and I am disappointed,” said Alya Alhwaiti, a member of the Huwaitat tribe displaced by the project.
Her cousin, Abdulrahim al-Huwaiti, was killed last year while attempting to demolish his house. She now lives in the UK and accused Western companies that joined the project of “not caring about human rights”.
The fantasy city is expected to be located partly on land and partly in the Red Sea and backed by Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion private investment fund.
The city sits on the borders with Jordan and Egypt and will welcome residents and businesses by 2030, but builders and urban planners say it could take up to 50 years to complete.
They also aren’t sure if residents will move into the metal complex after the pandemic, and are concerned that the giant structure could affect animal and bird migration and groundwater flow.
Environmental planners say the building’s mirrored glazing could further confuse birds during their annual migration across the region.
Documents have revealed plans to build robot girls that will clean the homes of these well-paid foreign workers so they don’t have to worry about household chores.
Cloud seeding will also be used to create rain clouds in the incredibly dry country the size of Western Europe.
The process involves dumping substances such as dry ice, using airplanes or drones, into clouds to create rainfall.
Some of the other outlandish proposals for the city include “dinosaur robots” in a Jurassic Park-style attraction and “robot martial arts” where machines fight each other for entertainment.
The kingdom also wants to create a giant artificial moon that will light up every night and serve as an important landmark.
MBS recently stated that it wanted the sand on the city’s proposed Silver Beach to “glow” in the dark.
However, two sources close to the project told the Wall Street Journal that engineers haven’t found a way to do that safely yet.
Saudi announced the construction of Neom at the 2017 Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh.
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