NEOM 2050

By 2050, hundreds of new economic cities will stand across Asia, sprung from empty lands in half a century of building. So many of these tech-driven, future-facing metropolises are being master-planned (some estimate 285 in China alone) that there is a sand shortage in the greener parts of the world; ambitious urban-inspired governments have even banned exports of this precious skyscraper-producing resource. Some of these cities already have residents; as industry arrives, so do people. All have ambitious master plans and elegantly crafted brand identities, positionings developed to “cut through the noise,” ensuring they become links in the chains of new trade routes, jostling for space amid legions of other imagined, sketched and rendered urban megalopolises.

In Saudi Arabia, we have