This archive report was first published on 31 July 2019.
On a desert landscape, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is envisioning a futuristic city, Neom, with a price tag of USD500 billion (Ksh52.18 trillion). The city, set to be built in the country's north west, will feature robot maids, flying taxis, and glow-in-the-dark sand, according to confidential planning documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal in 2019.
But that's not all - Neom will also boast an artificial moon, which will light up the sky every night, and a Jurassic Park-style island where visitors will mingle freely with robot dinosaurs. The city will also have human gene editing clinics, where residents can undergo procedures to become physically stronger and smarter than the average human.
However, the futuristic city comes with a dark side. Neom is designed to be a total surveillance state, where the government will spy on its citizens at will. Drones equipped with facial-recognition technology will be deployed across the city, and the data gathered will be relayed to Neom's law enforcement officials.
Since 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been consulting developers to actualize his vision of the city. The prince has widely been accused of being behind the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
