The project for the futuristic megacity of Saudi Arabia has been scaled down by the Saudi authorities. The titanic project for a city in the northwest of the country is experiencing its first delays.
Called “The Line”, the two immense parallel skyscrapers, 500 meters high, are to form the center of the city on the Red Sea. It is a $500 billion flagship project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, who seeks to diversify the oil country's economy. The two towers were expected to accommodate 1.5 million residents by 2030 and nine million by 2045, banking on a demographic boom needed to make Saudi Arabia an economic power. But according to the American media, the figure has been revised downwards and only 300,000 people are expected to live there by then. A contractor has even started to lay off some of the workers he employs on the site. The cost of the first phase, which extends until 2030, was estimated at 1,200 billion Saudi riyals (around 297 billion euros)