In Neom, the futuristic megacity that Saudi Arabia has been building since 2017, construction continues on a project that will cover 26,500 square kilometres at a total cost of US$500 billion. The initiative, which is the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is a key part of Vision 2030, a programme to transform the country's economy by weaning it off fossil fuels in favour of new sectors such as tourism and luxury.

Following the completion of the Sindalah island resort in the middle of the Red Sea last November, the first phase of The Line, the mega-development that will stretch along a very long straight line, was recently announced. We now know that the first section of The Line will be called Hidden Marina, will be 2.5km long and will rise 500 metres. Three interconnected modules, designed to accommodate more than 200,000 residents. The built-up area will be 21 million square metres, significantly larger than the 350,000 square metres of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscraper. 

There is another piece of news: Neom has signed an agreement to build an artificial intelligence data centre, always huge and always very expensive, in line with the scale of the whole project. With an initial investment of $5 billion, Neom and DataVolt, an international developer based in Saudi Arabia, will inaugurate the 1.5 gigawatt factory by 2028. This will put Saudi Arabia in competition with the United Arab Emirates for supremacy in artificial intelligence in the Gulf region.

Already one of the largest construction sites of all time, Neom will redefine many of the concepts associated with architecture and construction: in addition to a sustainable approach (albeit with total indifference to the presence of the local Howeitat tribe, which was brutally evicted), thousands of people from more than a hundred countries are working on Neom, but above all thousands of robots, the same robots that will inhabit the smartest city of all time, together with humans.

Opening image: Render of Hidden Marina, the first section of The Line. Courtesy Neom