Is Saudi’s eco-city realistic or a mirage?

It’s been a few years since Mohammed bin Salman announced plans for a high tech linear eco-city in the desert, and it is still splitting opinion. I'm a futurist who believes in positive change that technology can bring to the world, but I’m a realistic one, not one that lives in cloud cuckoo land where anything is possible.

Saudi Arabia is attempting to build an eco-city called ‘The Line’ from scratch using sustainable processes. It aims to be a smart, zero carbon city, powered entirely by renewables, where technology is harnessed to create a better quality of life. If that was proposed in the UK, I doubt there would be much controversy, but the Saudis are no strangers to it. However if they can deliver it, that’s something I would endorse.

Building infrastructure in the middle east is difficult and expensive. Dubai and other emirates nations have shown they can deliver huge infrastructure projects, but usually with the help of fossil fuels and overseas labour. Sustainability hasn’t been high on the agenda.

Every country is trying to adapt and improve its economic situation and I applaud that. The Saudi state knows it must transition away from oil, and to do that they need to embrace technology and attract investment.?

With The Line, they are adopting an entrepreneurial approach, courting big tech and medtech businesses, offering tax incentives to attract the best tech minds, importing the AI and robotics skills they need to make this pretty ambitious vision a reality, and also something they can then export globally.

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Exciting concepts

There are a lot of ideas, but it all depends how achievable it is. The benefit of building a city from scratch is that you are free from all the legacy infrastructure and regulations that make innovation difficult in a city like London.

The Line is meant to be a car-free city with “walkable communities”, where everything you need is within 5 minutes.

Connectedness and data are an important part of this. They say they’ll collect data from residents and use it to manage areas like utilities, transport and security. The idea of a city responding in real time to the needs of its people appeals to me in principle. This part is mainly software engineering, so it seems possible and I am impressed by the concept.

They propose using robotics for stuff like security, deliveries and even care-giving. Some of that feels far-fetched, but as with all projects, if they can deliver 80% of what was proposed, I’d see that as success.

Even though a lot of what they’re suggesting may not yet be possible, the point really is how you improve quality of life through technology and planning, whether that’s less travel to work, less stress-related disease. It all makes sense to me, but is it practical, and is it credible?

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Questions to answer

There are clearly some serious issues here, with governance, transparency and human rights top of the list. There are question marks over their treatment of tribes whose land they are co opting for The Line.

There’s a culture in the region of working people hard, and Saudi society is quite hierarchical. They are trying to attract the Amazons and Tesla’s of this world, and I wonder if there will be any benefit experienced by local people.

Building a high tech city in the desert doesn’t seem like the most eco-friendly idea either. They mention ‘cloud seeding’ to produce rain on demand, in order to control the climate and ensure it’s livable year-round. Even though solar will play a big role in the project, air conditioning in hot nations consumes a lot of energy, and projects like the World Cup in Qatar showed the problems with diverting natural resources to build infrastructure. So I think we have to have a critical eye on whether these ideas are supported by credible technology, and if this kind of project really is a net gain in terms of sustainability.

I also get the concerns about use of surveillance technology and facial recognition and the use of data. Perhaps I am a bit na?ve, but I don’t put Saudi Arabia in the same bracket as Russia or China, who I would not feel confident abusing that technology. If I was working in AI, for example, I would feel to some degree safer delivering, testing and embedding the latest technology practices within Saudi. But all of this may be irrelevant if they can’t raise the most important resource of all.

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Why are they scaling back, not up?

I’ve seen reports of the Saudis struggling to raise investment, and having to scale back the plans for The Line by 90% or more.

The original cost estimate was $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, and when I first heard about it, I felt they would have the clout to make it happen. But investors are more wary of the region now, particularly the human rights concerns and lack of transparency. The country’s reputation has had an impact on its ability to raise external finance.

I suspect 10 years ago they would have found it easier to raise money, but ESG is much higher on the agenda for large investors and corporations. There is greater focus and scrutiny on Saudi Arabia and that certainly makes a grand project like this harder to pull off.

Would I work there? I couldn’t live there permanently, but it’s theoretically an exciting place and I’m not sure I could resist a year or two for work, as long as I felt the government was listening to local and international concerns and working with people.

I am seeing some movement though, with several law firms relocating there. At Hydrogen, we are placing people into the Emirates, and I've had a few interesting conversations recently, especially with our legal practice, and as you’d expect opinion is split. Whatever happens, I’ll be watching closely though.

A net zero megacity is not something you’d ever see in the UK of course, but is there anything we can learn from this?

We’ve shown we are not that good at big infrastructure projects – we’ve been slow to build the EV charging network – and integrating lots of emerging technologies into an existing city like London or Liverpool is just not viable.

One thing we could take advantage of is software engineering, and how we can use AI and data to make our cities more efficient, more environmentally friendly, and make cities work for its ‘customers’.

I haven’t heard any political party talk about using technology to improve how our towns and cities work, which is why something like The Line feels so innovative. If they do build even some of it, there will be lessons other countries can learn, though we may have to wait until 2040!??

It won’t happen quickly, but it will be quicker there than anywhere else. If it does, maybe I’ll give it a try! Would you?