(BBC News) Autocratic monarchs once left an echo of their glory in the ruins of the megaprojects they commanded at the peak of their unchallenged power. Those monumental physical traces are to be found in the fertile plains, mountainsides and deserts of the Middle East. But one of their most prominent modern counterparts may only have a digital footprint to leave behind for some of his most ambitious concepts.
A decade ago, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman – or MBS as he is widely known – decreed a revisioning of his country that leapt from the realm of science fiction. It was called Vision 2030. Extraordinary monolithic structures were to help bring forth new technological marvels not just for the Kingdom but for the world.
Those ideas were made manifest in lavish PR material conjuring up fantastical landscapes that attracted reams of coverage that mingled awe and derision. It was made possible by the near $1 trillion (£744 billion) sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) whose riches, so dependent on oil, were to be used to create the foundation for a future without oil.
Four years from 2030, there has now been, perhaps predictably, a retrenchment. Part of that is down to financial imperatives, as a big fall in oil prices before the current war in the Middle East meant that even Saudi Arabia’s extraordinary wealth took a hit.
Even though those prices have shot up because of the war, the uncertainty created by the conflict will continue to put constraints on Saudi revenue and spending. And the influx of foreign investment in these hyper-expensive visionary projects has never materialised to the degree on which the Saudis had been banking.
But is it a recalibration or a retreat?
Some of the most striking projects are now being watered down, put on hold or even abandoned. Several come under the once all-embracing umbrella of the $500-billion Neom megaproject.
It looks like The Line, which was meant to redefine the concept of a city as it stretched ramrod straight across more than 161 km of untapped land in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, looming taller than The Shard, is being turned into something considerably more prosaic.
The winter resort of Trojena in the mountains of the northwest has also been reined in. There is snow up there, belying the image of Saudi Arabia as an unyielding desert, but it does not last very long. The concept of a year-round mountain resort took the area into a realm of artificiality that is no longer seen as viable. There were to have been miles of ski slopes and a full-on ski village with a man-made lake and luxury hotels and shops – a mini St Moritz in the mountains of Arabia. It was meant to have been ready in time to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029, but that has now been cancelled, with the Games to be held in Kazakhstan instead.
The Cube – a massive structure of flats and offices that could have contained the Empire State Building 20 times over – has been jettisoned entirely. It was set to cost an estimated $50 billion.
Most recently, one of the apparent crown jewels of the Kingdom’s vaulting ambition to become a world powerhouse of sport from a standing start, the LIV Golf tour, has been reassessed as a hugely expensive dud that has cost some $5 billion to date and brought neither a financial nor a reputational return.
Some longtime observers of Saudi Arabia, such as Ellen R Wald, the author of Saudi, Inc., feel like they have seen it all before.
“This is the same playbook, the same thing again with The Line. You know, ‘We’re going to build this huge thing. Oh wait, well now we’re going to significantly downscale it.’ And it’s the same thing over and over again, and it’s been that way even since before Mohammed bin Salman. They make these big announcements, they’re very splashy, and then it either doesn’t get built or it gets built in a significantly scaled down or [in a] ‘not what it was’ way.”
