Jeremy S. Pal & Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, “Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability,” Nature Climate Change 6 (2016): 197–200.
Gökçe Günel, “The Infinity of Water: Climate Change Adaptation in the Arabian Peninsula,” Public Culture 28, no. 2 (2016): 291–315, ➝.
Air conditioners consume about 70% of the electricity produced in the GCC. For an analysis, see Gökçe Günel, “The Backbone: Construction of a Regional Electricity Grid in the Arabian Peninsula,” Engineering Studies 10, no. 2–3 (2018): 90–114, ➝.
Pal and Eltahir, 199.
My book Spaceship in the Desert (Duke University Press, 2019) investigates the temporal and spatial characteristics of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, another significant project in the Arabian Peninsula. There are many conceptual similarities between Masdar City and NEOM, and the analysis in this piece parallels some of my work on Masdar City. Yet the projects embody different scales. For instance, Peter Terium who leads the Energy, Water and Food sector of NEOM, told me on a NewCities Foundation panel in August 2021 where we were both panelists that NEOM “is not a spaceship” and that “it is a region.” Yet both Masdar City and NEOM aspire for technocratic transformations that take their references from the 1960s, and project new kinds of potential onto arid landscapes. I discuss the conceptual similarities and differences of these two developments and trace their genealogies in a forthcoming article: “The Future of Temporality in the Arabian Peninsula.” In: Chad Elias eds., Futures Uncertain (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
First publicized in April 2016, Saudi Vision 2030 draws on a McKinsey report from December 2015, titled “Saudi Arabia Beyond Oil: The Investment and Productivity Transformation,” ➝.
Stephanie LeMenager. “The Aesthetics of Petroleum, after Oil!” American Literary History 24, no. 1 (2012): 59–86.
“HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announces designs for THE LINE, the city of the future in NEOM,” ➝.
NEOM, “Launch Announcement of The Line,” YouTube, January 10, 2021, ➝.
See for instance: Paul Lunde “The Seven Wonders” Saudi Aramco Magazine (1980): 14–27, ➝.
Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Other of Nature: 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 13.
NEOM, “NEOM | THE LINE - New Wonders for the World,” YouTube, July 25, 2022, ➝.
ArchDaily, “NEOM, The Futuristic Mega City Saudi Arabia Is Planning,” YouTube, October 26, 2017, ➝.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English word “desert” is derived from the Latin word “desertum,” meaning “abandoned, deserted, left waste.” The Arabic Word for desert, “صحراء” refers to the color of the sand instead, and is etymologically linked to words red and yellow.
Diana K Davis, The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge (MIT Press, 2010). Samia Henni’s 2022 edited volume Deserts Are Not Empty also explores this history (Columbia University Press, 2022).
For another example, see Emilio Distretti, “Titanic in the Desert,” Cabinet Magazine 63 (2017): 53–61.
NEOM, “This is NEOM,” YouTube, September 16, 2021, ➝.
Rem Koolhaas, “Last Chance?,” Al Manakh (Archis, 2007), 7.
Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007). For another analysis of segregationist urban forms, see Pascal Menoret, Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
NEOM, “What is OXAGON?,” YouTube, November 16, 2021, ➝.
Justin Scheck, Rory Jones, and Summer Said, “A Prince’s $500 Billion Desert Dream: Flying Cars, Robot Dinosaurs and a Giant Artificial Moon,” Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2019, ➝.
James Lynch, “Iron net: Digital repression in the Middle East and North Africa,” European Council on Foreign Relations, June 29, 2022, ➝.
See for instance: Frank Gardner, “Saudi tribe challenges crown prince's plans for tech city,” BBC News, April 23, 2020, ➝.
NEOM, “NEOM Pioneers,” YouTube, December 6, 2019, ➝. Surprisingly one of the main features of the NEOM Pioneers video are a plane wreck and a shipwreck. For a brief explanation of why the plane wreck is there, please see: “Why is there a seaplane in the middle of the Saudi Arabian Desert,” Esquire Middle East, ➝. For an overview of the shipwreck, see: Seema, “What is Georgios G Shipwreck?,” Neom City Guide, March 15, 2022, ➝. Both of these wrecks are from 1960, and are being framed as tourist attractions. "GEORGIOS G. SHIPWRECK," Desert Paths, ➝.
See Noora Lori. Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine (New York: Basic Books, 1988). Also see Zuboff’s recent book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Profile Books, London, 2018), where she reviews the contemporary practices of “informating” and profiting from big data. See also Jesse LeCavalier, The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 176–178.
Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 160–161.
Ibid, 282.
Vivian Nereim, “MBS’s $500 Billion Desert Dream Just Keeps Getting Weirder,” Bloomberg, July 14, 2022, ➝.
Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the film Blade Runner was released in 1982, three years before Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was born.
NEOM, “NEOM | What is THE LINE?,” YouTube, July 25, 2022, ➝.
James Imam, “Architects Dreaming of a Future with No Buildings,” The New York Times, February 12, 2021, ➝.