Great things can come from sheer imagination, provided a country’s leadership is able to understand the public pulse and then rechart its national destiny on the basis of a reimagined future. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, an outcome of such imagination by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is steering the Kingdom into a futuristic journey, with one grandiose project after another. Oxagon is the latest addition — a floating hexagonal industrial complex that will, in a decade’s time, provide the world’s first fully integrated port and supply chain ecosystem for NEOM.
NEOM itself is being built as a futuristic city at a price tag of $500 billion on the Red Sea coast in the northwestern Saudi province of Tabuk. Powered by green hydrogen, it seeks to provide a postmodern experience in urban living that we can only dream about — with robot maids, airborne taxis, an artificial moon and much more.
The Line is NEOM’s flagship project. It is a linear city linking the coast of the Red Sea with the region’s mountains and upper valleys that is being built along a 170 km line — with no cars, no streets, no carbon emissions and a hyperloop running down the middle, providing a supersonic, friction-free travel service to its 1 million residents.