Saudi Arabia Will Now Create a City Without Cars or Roads

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Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has come out with his latest vision for the nation which is the largest producer of oil an ambitious non-carbon emissions city without cars or roads.

The project named The Line will be home to a million people and have no cars and no streets, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said, Arab News reported.

The city will be a 170 kilometer belt of hyper-connected future communities and will be built around the natural environment. According to the prince, there was a need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one. By 2050, one billion people will have to relocate due to rising CO2 emissions and sea levels. 90 per cent of people breathe polluted air.

He asked, Why should we sacrifice nature for the sake of development? Why should seven million people die every year because of pollution? Why should we lose one million people every year due to traffic accidents? And why should we accept wasting years of our lives commuting?

The project is part of the prince's plans to build a zero-carbon city at NEOM, the first major construction project for the $500 billion flagship business zone aimed at diversifying the nation's economy.

Prince said, northwestern city of Al Ula that the project was the conclusion of three years of preparation, adding that its infrastructure would cost $100 billion to $200 billion. The backbone of investment in 'The Line' will come from the $500 billion support to NEOM by the Saudi government, PIF and local and global investors over 10 years.

The kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), is the cornerstone investor in NEOM, a 26,500-square-km (10,230-square-mile) high-tech development on the Red Sea with several zones, including an industrial and logistics areas, planned for completion in 2025.

There have been few announcements regarding NEOM.

A Saudi statement said construction would start in the first quarter of 2021 and that the city was expected to contribute $48 billion to the kingdom's gross domestic product and create 380,000 jobs.