Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with a project so big that merely building housing for construction workers will cost an estimated $5 billion—but the Neom project is not going entirely smoothly. The Wall Street Journal reports the megaproject is losing momentum amid rising costs and major blunders, including one in which a mountain of excavated dirt had to be moved because it was dumped on the site of a planned waterway to the Red Sea.
- The project. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has likened Neom to the Great Pyramids and made it the main focus of his plans to transform the country's economy. Plans call for a 105-mile-long city in the desert, known as "the Line," with a projected population of 9 million people living in skyscrapers taller than the Empire State Building.