Using much of the same rationale behind Neom and the Jeddah Tower, Saudi authorities say, the project will add 47 billion riyals - $12.5 billion - to the country’s economy by 2030. In December 2021, he announced the Jeddah Central Project, previously known as the New Jeddah Downtown, which is spending $20 billion to develop 2.2 square miles in the southern part of the city. The crown prince has his own plans for Jeddah, which might explain the lack of progress on the tower. Since then, the site has remained quiet despite the occasional statement to the contrary - and a website that still features a fly-through animation of the tower with the tagline “It’s happening.” Work stalled just as it was about to restart in 2020, the pandemic hit. Then Mohammed became crown prince and launched an anti-corruption purge - critics characterized it as a power grab - that ensnared Prince Alwaleed and the Binladin Group, the tower’s main contractor. and the oil-rich kingdom falter.Ĭonstruction progressed rapidly at first, erecting 63 stories by the end of 2017. World & Nation With U.S.-Saudi ties at a low point, China’s leader comes callingĬhina spies an opportunity to draw closer politically and economically to Saudi Arabia as ties between the U.S. ![]() You speak about downtown Dubai - and now we’re going to have downtown Jeddah.” But the ambition was about more than size: In a 2018 interview with CNN, the project’s development boasted that the tower “would reposition Jeddah on the international scene of modern cities. The tower’s planned height of more than 3,280 feet was a riposte to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa - the two projects share the same “starchitects,” Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill - which tops 2,700 feet and remains the world’s tallest building. It was to form the nucleus of a new downtown district drawing entrepreneurs in tech and tourism as the country diversified its economy away from oil. It was Neom writ small, if that’s what you could call a $1.5-billion, 252-story Y-shaped skyscraper with apartments, a Four Seasons Hotel and hyper-fast elevators that would rocket visitors to the observation deck on the 157th floor in just over a minute. Launched in 2008, the Jeddah Tower was the brainchild of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, at the time the country’s most high-profile royal entrepreneur, before the crown prince became the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Their failure points up the central question that various Persian Gulf potentates, despite billions of dollars and decades of effort, have been unable to answer: Can the combination of limitless funds, architectural star power and sheer chutzpah create a place where people actually want to live? Or to put it more simply, if you build it, will they come? Out of $719 billion earmarked for 15 giga-projects, only $30 billion has been awarded so far, meaning that the developments are still at a nascent stage, with the pace expected to accelerate in the coming few years.īut clouding those ambitions are the husks of previous endeavors across Saudi Arabia and the wider region that were supposed to do much the same thing yet now stand all but abandoned. This year, the kingdom dominated the Middle East’s construction sector with 35% of contract awards by value, according to the Middle East Economic Digest group. More of what Saudi Arabia dubs giga-projects are expected. ![]() ![]() Young Saudis are letting loose at new state-sponsored social and cultural events even as the government cracks down harshly on political dissent. ![]() World & Nation Dancing is in, dissent is out as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince transforms his country There’s also Trojena, a ski resort that will host the 2029 Asian Winter Games Oxagon, the world’s largest floating industrial complex King Salman Airport, a so-called aerotropolis that is supposed to handle 120 million travelers by 2030 and Sindalah, an island project off Neom’s coast announced last month that bills itself as a 9-million-square-foot “playground for the world’s luxury travelers.” Then came the Line, a pair of “horizontal skyscrapers” stretching 105 miles - yes, miles, meaning that the two complexes would run an unbroken distance equal to that between downtown Los Angeles and Joshua Tree National Park. In 2017, he announced his flagship Neom project, a Massachusetts-sized megacity being built in Saudi Arabia’s northwest. With the powerful, $600-billion Saudi sovereign Public Investment Fund behind him, the crown prince is intent on eclipsing rivals in a region that is no stranger to Ozymandian-scale projects. Enlisting some of the world’s star architects, Saudi Arabia is launching mammoth development projects by the dozen that it says will remake the country’s oil-based economy, cement its claim as the region’s commercial superpower and supercharge its cities’ ascent to global status.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |