Saudi Arabia is planning to build a $1 trillion sideways skyscraper stretching over 120 km, which will house five million people, a report by the Wall Street Journal has said. Pictures of what the mirrored skyscraper called ‘Mirror Line’ will look like have also been shared online.
As a part of its Neom desert megacity, Saudi Arabia is planning to construct two parallel, mirrored structures that will be nearly 500 meters tall and 120 kilometres long. The two buildings will form the majority of “The Line,” an ambitious plan to construct a zero-carbon city in a 170km line announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in January 2021.
The Mirror Line will use vertical farming to feed its residents, with vegetables “autonomously harvested and bundled”.
The two buildings will be connected via walkways, and a high-speed train will run underneath them. People will be able to travel end-to-end within a 20-minute stretch.
Neom megacity project in Saudi Arabia to be 33 times of New York City
Five million people will be housed after the project is finished, according to the insiders who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.
Neom employees warned that the huge buildings would alter the dynamics of water flow in the desert and restrict the movement of animals, according to the leaked documents. They also expressed worries about the potentially harmful effects on the health of the shade produced by two parallel and tall buildings.
Neom’s senior foreign consultants are being offered tax-free salaries of up to $900,000, for ideas that will most likely never see the light of day.
The new Saudi megacity is touted to be 33 times the size of New York City and will include the 170km straight line city, an eight-sided city that floats on water, and a ski resort with a folded vertical village among other grandiose and architecturally challenging constructions.
The project is being built in the Tabuk province of northwestern Saudi Arabia, where the displaced Al-Howeitat tribe had, until recently, lived for centuries.