Saudi Arabia has ambitious plans to build a megacity spanning desert and mountains, featuring two skyscrapers stretching for 75 miles, according to planning documents accessed by The Wall Street Journal.
The project, Mirror Line, is expected to cost a whopping $1 trillion. It is just one of the gigantic projects that will become part of Neom -- the futuristic megacity envisioned by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an effort to diversify the country's economy.
The Saudis are planning Mirror Line as a community of 5 million people. To feed them, vertical farming will be merged with the buildings. For transportation, there will be a high speed underground train, according to the WSJ report .
A yacht marina and a grand stadium 1,000 feet above the ground will cater to the leisure requirements of the residents.
If completed, Mirror Line will be a project unlike anything the world has seen before. Urban planners have been given a 2030 deadline to finish the project, WSJ reported.
But there are many challenges standing in the way of megacity Neom's completion. There have been several delays and employees working on it have quit en masse because of the pressure.
Foreign investments have also been hard to come by. According to WSJ, the inflow of investments into Saudi Arabia have reduced from $16 billion a decade ago to $5.4 billion last year.
Many western nations have chosen to boycott Saudi Arabia for its questionable human rights record, particularly after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and Saudi agents in 2018.
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