In doing so, it helps secure future legitimacy for the country’s rulers, promising progress and stability. 6 In a context of uncertainty about the political, economic, and environmental future of the Arabian Peninsula, marketing and promotional material for NEOM plays a vital role, demonstrating that Saudi Arabia will diversify its economy away from fossil fuels and overcome possible ecological, social, and financial crises with the help of new design solutions, business models, and technological innovations. With a compound name that merges Greek word “ neo,” meaning “new,” and the Arabic word “ mustaqbal,” meaning “future,” NEOM supports the Saudi Vision 2030, which lays out the country’s aspirations for reducing its dependence on oil exports and developing new sectors for generating wealth.
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Situated in the Tabuk district in northwestern Saudi Arabia, the free trade zone will contain three separate cities housing nine million people by 2045: Trojena, Oxagon, and the much-advertised The Line. 5 In 2017, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman announced NEOM, envisioning a master-planned region spanning 26,500 square kilometers-an area comparable in size to the state of Massachusetts-that would straddle Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel. 3 Conversely, if oil runs out or loses its value, these countries might no longer be able to afford such infrastructural solutions, resulting in what the report bleakly describes as “premature death of the weakest-namely elderly and children.” 4 As the report concludes, “A plausible analogy of future climate for many locations in Southwest Asia is the current climate of the desert of Northern Afar on the African side of the Red Sea, a region with no permanent human settlements owing to its extreme climate.”Īs such dire climate change predictions circulate, so do announcements about mega and giga projects that seek to offer inexhaustible energy and desalinated water.
2 If they remain oil-rich, states like Saudi Arabia will manage to supply the necessary electricity to keep indoors temperatures cool, but outdoor activities will become nearly impossible in such intense heat and humidity. 1 Not only will air conditioners run at increasing rates, but residents of the region will also suffer from freshwater scarcity. A 2016 report in Nature Climate Change states that climate change will make much of the Arabian Peninsula too hot for humans, pushing past limits of adaptability by the end of the twenty-first century.
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