From Saudi Arabia they sold it as the city of the future and “a revolution of civilization.” It is a huge mass more than 170 kilometers long in which 9 million people were going to live. It is being built in the middle of the country’s desert, but the projected figures do not correspond to reality. Yes, the latest fiasco of these mega constructions.

The Arab country wants to transform kilometers and kilometers of desert into a vertical online city that looks like something out of a video game with more than 400 meters high and 170 kilometersof lengthas seen in the recreations that appear in the images that accompany these lines.

The idea is to have all kinds of services in the same space, such as gardens, shops, luxury homes on both sides of the line and even a marina for boats coming from the Red Sea. However, the project has run up against the reality of construction timelines. The truth is that by 2030 only about 2.5 kilometers of structure and house less than 300 thousand people.

Architect Mark Fenwick explained that “for example in Madrid, the Chamartín Norte district, we have been developing urban development for almost fifteen years.” In this way he considers that “the development of a project of this magnitude It takes time and responsibility.”

To give you an idea, it is more or less the distance between Madrid and Valladolid. Each architect carries out a piece of this megaproject and then fits them together. And all this in complicated terrain. “This is like building a highway. A 170-kilometer highway sometimes crosses difficult topographies but technically it is viable,” says Fenwick.

This is the great obsession of Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, for which at the moment will have to wait at least a few more years to make it a reality in line with the capabilities foreseen in the project.