IN THE south west corner of the Arabian desert, an enormous trench has been formed. It may look like it was carved out by an alien presence but it is in fact evidence that one of the most ambitious construction projects in history is steaming ahead.
The 200-metre wide trench runs from the Hejaz mountains across to the Gulf of Aqaba. As if that wasn’t enough, a small portion of it contains the start of what will be the biggest set of foundations ever built. Once that concrete has set, the first vertical structures will begin to emerge.
This incredible hive of activity is in fact the construction site of The LINE, Saudi Arabia’s wildly ambitious megacity in the desert. To put it another way, the thing everybody said would or could never be built is actually being built.
Above: Satellite imagery showing construction of The LINE Image: Google.
Or is it? Because for every sign of progress, rumours swirl of scalebacks, insurmountable budget blowouts and mass lay offs. There are even rumours swirling that the whole thing has been cancelled. But what we actually know for sure is much more limited.
2026 will be make or break for The LINE. This is where deadlines need to be met and progress will be measured in height, not hype. Regardless of what you think of this mind boggling project, there’s a country with its future invested in it and a leader whose reputation is staked on it.
So, the trillion dollar question: will it ever be built?
Let’s start with the basics. The LINE is Saudi Arabia’s plan for a 170-kilometre linear city, rising to a consistent height of 500-metres. When it’s complete, it’ll form the capital city of NEOM, a vast new region in the country’s northwest, dreamed up by the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. NEOM, in turn, forms a key pillar of Vision 2030, a countrywide plan to transition the Saudi economy away from oil dependency by 2030.
Above: An early render of The Line. Image: NEOM.
How is it being built? The initial challenge for any projector of this scale is geology. The LINE crosses wildly varying terrain: hard mountain rock, soft open desert, and salty coastal plains. To build anything across such varied land, you first need a uniform, stable footing.
That’s where foundations come in. The LINE will rest on a subterranean structure known as a piled raft foundation. The “piles” are sunk deep into the earth, along the Line’s footprint. These cylinders of reinforced concrete bypass soft, unstable strata of earth and rest upon the hard bedrock below. The flat concrete “raft” lays on top of these piles and creates a flat, uniform platform to build on.
To pull this off, an automated factory is churning out 32-metre long rebar cages, used to mould and reinforce each pile. Meanwhile, drilling rigs use GPS to precisely bore the holes these rebar cages will be dropped into. A biodegradable liquid is pumped into the holes to stop them from collapsing before concrete can be poured in.
But it’s not just soft earth engineers have to grapple with. Being so close to the sea, this stretch also needs protecting from the highly saline ground water. Left untreated this could rust the steel cages and over time corrode the concrete piles.
To solve this, the world’s largest de-watering system was created. 500 wells were drilled along a stretch of The LINE, each equipped with a water pump at its base. Water is pumped out at a rate of 90,000-cubic metres per hour towards a settlement pond where the quality of the liquid is checked. From there, the water is filtered and pumped out to sea in a series of discharge pipes.
Work on the foundations for phase one is nearly complete which means the project is about to enter its next milestone: going vertical.
On a typical skyscraper, that means building the core. If you’ve ever walked past a construction site, you’ll have seen these go up, they’re not very attractive, but they’re critical to how a skyscraper works. It’s essentially the backbone of the building, and it’s formed by pouring concrete into a mould that gets pushed up by hydraulic jacks.
Above: A typical skyscraper core under construction.
But with The LINE, there’s a twist. Because it’s a city, not a building, it won’t have a 170-kilometre long core that everything sits inside. Instead, it will feature thousands of cores. These will be developed features in their own right but crucially, they will also support a series of decks.
Imagine taking Manhattan’s grid, folding it up and stacking it vertically. These decks are the city’s avenues and the cores are the streets linking each one. This is where the city will come to life. On these decks you’ll find schools, housing, transport, everything you need to make a city function.
Phase one will see 4.8-million tonnes of steel outrigger beams hoisted up to support five decks running through each. Usually on skyscrapers, the steel frame and cladding start to be added before the core is finished. That’s potentially why 2026 could be a huge year for The LINE, because it’s the first stage we can expect to see fast progress.
Above: Steelwork outrigger beams are expected to be installed on The Line’s cores