JAMIE CARR: The Saudis are throwing $500bn at a new city
There’s no hyperbole in the statement that this is 'the world’s most ambitious project: an entire new land, purpose-built for a new way of living'
Neom: Dreams in the desert That old romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge would have had a thing or two to say about the intentions of Saudi Arabia’s dynamic new supremo, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS. It was 220 years ago when the poet stuffed himself to the gills with opium, hit the pillow and woke up after a dream that is startlingly prescient of the vision of MBS: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." If you change a couple of names and update the tech, you’ve got the plan for Neom.There’s no hyperbole in the statement that this is "the world’s most ambitious project: an entire new land, purpose-built for a new way of living". The Saudis are chucking US$500bn at a chunk of land straddling their borders with Jordan and Egypt, and while it currently looks like a pretty scrubby patch of desert with the Red Sea in front and some forbidding mountains behind, there’s no doubt that $500bn can perk things up.Despite a sterling attempt from one of th...
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