What is NEOM?

Neom is a planned cross-border city in Saudi Arabia's Tabuk Province in the northwest. It will be equipped with smart city technology and will also serve as a tourism attraction. North of the Red Sea, east of Egypt across the Tiran Strait, and south of Israel and Jordan, the location is located. It will encompass a total area of 26,500 km2 and stretch for 460 kilometers along the Red Sea's coast.

By 2025, Saudi Arabia hopes to have completed the first segment of Neom. The total cost of the project is anticipated to be $500 billion. The company's goal is to develop Neom's economic zone, which is held entirely by the Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund. The project is expected to run entirely on renewable energy sources.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman unveiled the city on October 24, 2017, during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Vision 2030, a goal to lessen Saudi Arabia's reliance on oil, diversify its economy, and strengthen public service sectors, inspired the effort. Security, logistics, home delivery, and caring will all be handled by robots, and the city will be fueled entirely by wind and solar energy. Other infrastructural and mobility advancements have been suggested because the city would be created and built from the ground up. The Saudi Public Investment Fund and international investors will contribute $500 billion to the planning and building of the project.

Components of NEOM project

The Line

In January 2021, the project released plans for The Line, a 170-kilometer (110-mile) long linear metropolis within the Neom region with a population of 1 million people who will not have access to traditional automobiles.

Neom Bay

Neom Bay, the project's first phase, was set to begin development in the first quarter of 2019 and be finished by 2020. Construction of an airport at Sharma, which would run frequent commercial flights between Riyadh and Neom, was one among the planned improvements. As part of phase 1 of the Neom Bay development plan, the first residential neighborhood in Neom will be built.

Neom Bay Airport

After the first phase of the airport, with a runway length of 3,757 meters, was finished in June 2019, it was reported that the Neom Bay Airport will begin receiving commercial flights.

Neom Industrial City 

Neom Industrial City (NIC) lies around 25 kilometers (16 miles) north of Duba and comprises approximately 200–250 square kilometers of land, with the NIC occupying about 40 square kilometers. The project will concentrate on contemporary manufacturing and industrial research, as well as development based on the Duba port extension.

Agriculture 

Neom intends to convert 6,500 hectares of surrounding land to agricultural fields, with a heavy reliance on genetically modified crops.

Neom International Airport 

The entire Development Area is 20.2 square kilometers. 6,600 m in length and 3,061 m in width. The project is currently under process.

NEOM: The city of dreams

There are many dreams by the Saudi leadership; that is planned to be established in NEOM. Everything in this city is supposed to start from scratch, to avoid repeating the conventional city features. The concept of the crown prince is that; it would be impossible to build an entity like NEOM except by eliminating the vision of existing cities; and working on establishing a new location, fresh investment, young people, and businesses supported by new technology and artificial intelligence; in addition to new regulations.

The community of NEOM is a topic that intersects with several issues, Saudi traditions and religion, 2030 Saudi vision, Saudi young generation, women’s rights, and the expected new citizens: the Robots, the creative population, and the investors, altogether will shape the social features of NEOM community.

The Saudi leadership’s vision is to make NEOM, a city of robots to be the first city that has more robots than the human population. This is a kind of city branding of NEOM in the image of the futuristic city that has been watched several times in science fiction movies, where robots are serving people and carrying out all required tasks with the utmost precision, sincerity, cleanliness, and order. Masayoshi Son in the conference of NEOM explained that the use of robots would make people’s lives better and happier when they have time for what really matters and above all of that will give Saudi Arabia the leadership in the future.

A world-scale project like NEOM will help to develop robotic technology, that will have a big impact on both the population of NEOM and all mankind. This will have a big impact on both the population of NEOM and all of humankind. The investment in robots will be an essential pivot in developing NEOM, as well as the call for robots’ engineers to come, implement their technology, and create the next-generation robots.