The Line NEOM Cancelled: Implications for Saudi Architecture and Engineering

This post examines the dramatic unravelling of The Line, the flagship element of Saudi Arabia’s Neom and Vision 2030. The 110-mile “horizontal skyscraper” moved from glossy renderings to what many engineers now call paper architecture.

Drawing on technical, environmental, and human-rights reporting, I explain why the proposal was fundamentally unbuildable. I also explore how prestigious Western firms became complicit, and what lessons architects and engineers must take from this failure.

Why The Line collapsed from vision to impracticality

The Line was marketed as an ecological, ultra-modern urban solution: linear living, indoor gardens, and renewable systems wrapped in a continuous mirrored façade. But beneath the renderings were contradictions that any seasoned architect or engineer would flag.

Physics, operations, and logistics were never reconciled with the spectacle. The project’s promise clashed with harsh realities.

As someone with three decades in architecture and engineering, I recognize the lure of high-profile commissions. The Line highlights how design prestige can blind firms to feasibility and ethics.

Technical and environmental failures

Structural and aerodynamic challenges: A continuous reflective surface hundreds of miles long creates complex wind loading patterns and glare issues that endanger both people and wildlife. Long-span structures compound thermal movement and require materials and joints far beyond typical engineering practice.

Waste, water, and operational realities: The proposal skirted basic urban systems design. How do you treat sewage, manage stormwater, and supply continuous utilities along a 110-mile sealed corridor?

The logistics of maintenance, emergency access, and redundancy were largely absent from promotional materials.

False sustainability claims: The Line’s green branding ignored the carbon embedded in the vast quantities of steel, concrete, and glass required. Emissions from transporting materials and labor were also overlooked.

What was framed as carbon-neutral looked closer to culture-washing—using environmental rhetoric to sell a petrostate-funded fantasy.

Biodiversity impacts: Investigative reporting flagged risks to migratory birds and sensitive ecosystems from light reflection and disrupted corridors. Large-scale infrastructure in fragile landscapes typically demands rigorous ecological impact assessments that were either incomplete or downplayed.

Human rights, firm complicity, and the politics of architecture

Beyond technical impossibilities, The Line’s implementation was accompanied by serious human-rights abuses. Forced displacement of indigenous communities, coercive security measures, and systemic exploitation of migrant workers were reported by Human Rights Watch and other organizations.

Western firms and star architects lent prestige and legitimacy to the project, often in exchange for sizable fees and design freedom. That relationship raises profound ethical questions: when does professional endorsement become complicity?

What accountability and ethical practice should look like

Architects and engineers must accept that their work is inherently political.

To prevent future complicity in harmful projects, the profession should adopt clearer norms and stronger accountability mechanisms:

• Transparent due diligence: Firms must perform independent social and environmental impact assessments before attaching their names to megaprojects.
• Human-rights screening: Contract clauses should forbid participation where forced displacement or documented abuses occur.
• Peer review and technical audits: Large-scale proposals need independent engineering validation accessible to public scrutiny.
• Ethics-led contracting: Professional bodies should sanction firms that ignore documented abuses or misrepresent feasibility.

 
Here is the source article for this story: The Line, a Saudi Megaproject, Is Dead