by James Howard Kunstler
November 09, 2025
from Kunstler Website

Behold, the "Sky Stadium" announced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the latest jazzy edition to their utopian "smart city" project known as The Line or NEOM:

an $8-trillion, 105-mile-long (170 Km.) megastructure composed of two 1640-foot-high (490 m.)  mirrored slabs that enclose a creamy nougat center of jungly foliage and water features integrated with apartments, offices, schools, and (of course) shopping.

It's completely insane, you understand.

The Line was first featured on this site in August 2022.

Three years on, the project is buckling under the weight of its psychotic grandiosity.

Here's a cross-section of the The Line's beginning at the Persian Gulf:
 

Here's another schematic angle on The Line to appreciate how it shoots straight out into the Arabian Desert:
 

The 46,000-seat Sky Stadium will be perched 1,150-feet up and is slated to be completed in time for the 2034 Fifa football (soccer) World Cup.

The initial A-I generated renderings at the top of the page show it suspended on a skyscraper above a sprawling city, but it is actually designed to be "nested" somewhere between the two slabs of The Line.

First announced in 2017 as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 diversification push, The Line was envisioned as a futuristic "cognitive city" with vertical urbanism, AI integration, 100-percent renewable energy (solar power), and 95-percent land preservation of its barren surroundings in the Tabuk province, "for nature."

I don't know about you, but I'd be a little nervous about watching a soccer game 1,150-feet above the desert floor.

Sounds like a super-gigantic version of one of those Sky Bridge" failures of the 1990s, where a mere hundred drunken people swilling margaritas collapse a hanging architectural folly in a Shopping Mall. We'll stand by for the halftime show there.

August 2022
Commentary on Architectural Blunders in monthly serial
by James Howard Kunstler
August 03, 2022
 

 

 

Behold:

the architectural wonder of the world called The Line, a feature of Saudi Arabia's NEOM project, a utopian, super-gigantic, techno-grandiose, mega-city - a 75 miles-long combo landscraper/skyscraper 1600 feet (490 m.) high, with a mirrored exterior.

The Line is actually two buildings running parallel its entire 75-mile length, sandwiching a "zero-gravity" metropolis between them, stuffed with trees and other furnishings related to "nature."

 

The publicity literature does not explain how trees will grow in zero gravity, considering that the entire life-function of trees is based on how water behaves under earth's gravity.

 

But no matter, the videos show people flying through the thing, and that's what matters in a world techno-culture under the sway of super-hero movies.

 

Also included are "swim lanes for commuters" and a ski resort. Estimated cost is $1-trillion, which one would have to consider naively low.

Here's a gander at the interior.

 

Anyone who lives in the US sub-tropics - Florida, Texas, etc - knows that evergreen trees and palms drop a lot of "tree-shit" too, year-round, which the maintenance crew constantly has to clean up.

 

 

 

 

Here's a nice touch:

a soccer stadium 1000-feet up in the air (roughly a hundred stories).

Cute. I'd like to see the engineering specs for that.

 

NEOM is the brain-child of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz (MSA). We'll stand by to see what happens.

 

My guess:

the whole thing will be reduced to a half-dozen condo towers on the Red Sea coast... and... with Western Civ (civilization) collapsing and global tourism flickering out... NEOM and The Line will never even get started...