NEOM

node · earth · Tabuk Province

A development zone in Tabuk province in north-western Saudi Arabia, funded by the Public Investment Fund and announced in 2017, within which The Line — a linear city announced in January 2021 as 170 kilometres long, 200 metres wide and mirror-clad — became the most widely circulated urban rendering of the decade. It is included here as a proposed system, because that is what the evidence supports. Reputable reporting through 2025 and into 2026 describes a consultant-led feasibility review of The Line commissioned by the PIF, expectations of far fewer residents by 2030 than the 1.5 million originally briefed, construction reduced to an initial segment, and NEOM's omission from the kingdom's 2026 pre-budget statement, with the broader zone repositioned around industrial and energy activity. Retrieved figures for suspension dates, write-downs and contract values come predominantly from secondary aggregation and are not restated here as fact. What NEOM demonstrates is not that the engineering is impossible but that a city is a fifty-year operating commitment being financed as a capital project.