The Line at a Crossroads: Revisiting NEOM's Vision for a Utopian City | ArchDaily

Save this picture!THE LINE, Phase One Strategic Partners. Image © NEOMWritten by Olivia PostonPublished on March 25, 2026 Share ShareFacebookTwitterMailPinterestWhatsappOrhttps://www.archdaily.com/1039911/the-line-at-a-crossroads-revisiting-neoms-vision-for-a-utopian-city Clipboard "COPY" CopyIn 2023, ArchDaily's editor-in-chief sat down with Tarek Qaddumi, Executive Director of the Line Design at NEOM, at the closing of the Line Exhibition in Riyadh. Qaddumi described a layered, three-dimensional city organized around the idea of a "five-minute sphere" of access: walkable communities stacked vertically, connected by high-speed rail, freed from cars and conventional street infrastructure, and designed to coexist symbiotically with the surrounding natural landscape. It was a compelling vision, and in the context of the moment, it was simultaneously credible and appealing. For architects and urban thinkers grappling with the failures of twentieth-century city-building, the ideas articulated were worth engaging and planning.+ 5 Since the exhibition, the centerpiece of the larger NEOM megaproject, the Line, has been colliding with the laws of physics, political structures, and unforgiving finance systems, having been sharply scaled back after years of overreach and mounting skepticism. What was announced in 2021 as a 170-kilometer mirrored linear city housing nine million people has, by early 2026, been reduced to construction pauses, a $8 billion sovereign wealth fund write-d...