From the biggest structure ever built to history's most epic folly: Mohammed Bin Salman's $1.5tn futuristic megacity... will actually be more like Nottingham. As humiliated Saudi ruler is forced to downsize his dreams, TOM LEONARD looks at what went wrong

Imagine, if you can, a 105-mile long, pencil-thin horizontal skyscraper - a sidescraper - that cuts through high mountains and arid desert.

It will house a city of nine million people. There will be no cars or streets but flying taxis instead: oh, and a giant fake moon, animatronic dinosaurs and an army of robots to harvest food, cook and clean for the pampered population. As for carbon emissions, they will be zero.

As fantastical concept pictures showed, there would be nothing like the city of Neom anywhere - at least on this planet. Which is no surprise. The sci-fi architecture - especially reminiscent of the hit 1982 futuristic film Blade Runner - is indeed influenced by the masters of Hollywood special effects.

The $1.5 trillion project's 105-mile centrepiece – dubbed The Line - will only be 1.5 miles by 2030, the deadline set by its creator, Saudi Arabia 's Crown Prince Saudi Mohammed bin Salman

But was this mind-boggling plan ever likely to see fruition?

The question was humiliatingly answered last week, as insiders revealed to news site Bloomberg. The $1.5 trillion project's 105-mile centrepiece – dubbed The Line - will only be 1.5 miles by 2030, the deadline set by its creator, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Saudi Mohammed bin Salman.

Instead of housing 1.5million by the end of the decade (with plans to reach its full capacity of nine million people), Neom will now be home to a mere 300,000 - barely the size of Nottingham.

Although officials insist the original vision remains the same - albeit on a substantially increased timeframe - at least one contractor has been dismissing workers involved in the project as people at the highest levels of the Saudi government have reportedly expressed concern at its stratospheric cost.

Throughout history many megalomaniac dreamers have sought to rival the ambition of Egyptian pharaohs and built their own equivalent of the great pyramids - with varying degrees of success.

Now, it seems, it is the Crown Prince's turn to realise the dangers of human hubris.

Although work is continuing on other parts of the broader Neom project and officials insist The Line's overall vision remains the same, the situation feels a world away from 2022, when detailed plans were first unveiled for this vast metropolis in the sand. With a price tag estimated to rise as high as $1 trillion, the big question then, even with his country's $620 billion sovereign wealth fund - not to mention the world's second largest proven oil reserves to play with - was whether his vision was just too fantastical ever to be realised.

It could have been the biggest structure ever built, but now it could become history's most epic folly.

FLIGHT OF FANCY

He presides over an authoritarian regime that routinely jails, tortures and murders opponents - notably the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 - but the Crown Prince, or MBS as he's known, has tried hard to be seen internationally as a reformer and moderniser.

And it doesn't get much more modern than Neom, which is an amalgam of the Greek word for 'new' and the Arabic word for 'future'.

Announced in 2017 by the Prince, Neom is the flagship project in a masterplan to diversify Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy as the world increasingly turns to greener energy alternatives.

Seven years on, Neom has been plagued by setbacks as an army of workers and advisors struggle to cope with Saudi's de facto ruler's mercurial temperament, ever-changing ideas and refusal to compromise.

MBS, 38, reportedly found the site for his dream city in Saudi Arabia's remote, far northwestern province of Tabuk, after landing there in his helicopter.

'I want to build my pyramids,' he told advisors. He has already built a palace there.

But at least the pyramids were grounded in what was achievable at the time. An internal 'style catalogue' for Neom seen by Bloomberg News two years ago includes flying elevators, an urban 'spaceport' and buildings 'shaped like a double helix, a falcon's outstretched wings, and a flower in bloom'.

Neom will also feature a ski resort, The Vault, built into a crater created by blowing a chunk out of a mountainside (in winter, even in the desert, mountain-top temperatures plunge, so making fake snow outdoors is possible). A huge yacht marina is planned for the Red Sea to one day lure holidaymakers who might otherwise have gone to the French Riviera.

MBS is a sci-fi fan and the Neom team has commissioned work from, among others, designers who created the look of the Guardians of the Galaxy and 'Dark Knight' Batman films, as well as a futurist who worked on the dystopian zombie movies World War Z and I Am Legend. Chris Gray, a California writer, says he was hired to research the 'aesthetics' of key sci-fi films and books including, of course, Blade Runner with its futuristic realisation of Los Angeles.

The Crown Prince, or MBS as he's known, has tried hard to be seen internationally as a reformer and moderniser

LINE IN THE SAND

It was the intention that the glittering centrepiece of Neom will be The Line, an elongated 'linear' city, the original plans of which were 33 times the size of New York. Sited close to the borders with Jordan and Egypt, it was going to stretch in an unbroken line from desert in the east, through a range of coastal mountains to the Red Sea in the west.

The Line, which is being designed by the cutting-edge US firm Morphosis Architects, is actually two tall buildings running parallel, connected by walkways. It will be just 656ft (200m) wide. They will have dazzling mirrored surfaces and will rise up to 1,640ft (500m) above sea level - taller than the Empire State Building.

Neom was set to have 14 industrial sectors, including energy, media and food production, and about two robots allocated to every citizen.

The major downsizing revealed this week doesn't address various challenges that remain, not least the vast amount of shadow that will be created by the parallel buildings. Neom planning papers concede that lack of sunlight could damage the health of some inhabitants.

Gardens and parks, not to mention a huge sports stadium 1000ft above ground level where robots could someday wrestle in cage fights (just one of many entertainment ideas), will be housed within the city, between the two parallel buildings.

The Line was so long, at least at its inception, that even the curvature of the Earth - about eight inches every mile - had to be considered and so a gap would be left at intervals to 'bend' The Line where necessary.

A high-speed rail link running under the Line will allow passengers to get from one end of the city to the other in just 20 minutes - though that journey will now be considerably shorter. An alternative transport method will be flying taxis.

MBS has hailed the Line as 'a civilisational revolution that puts humans first'. But foreign investors, who he's keen to attract, have made clear that his regime's abysmal human rights record hardly encourages much optimism in his compassion.

SMART AT HEART

MBS says Neom will be a test-bed for new technologies that could revolutionise urban life. Despite the region having almost no fresh water and temperatures that soar above 100F in summer, its planners pledge that Neom's citizens will live in harmony with nature.

State-of-the-art desalination plants will process water from the Red Sea and the baking sun will provide solar energy to a fully renewable electric grid.

Cloud seeding, a technology designed to create rain by modifying the weather and outside temperature, will cool the city and water the crops that will provide fresh produce.

So-called 'smart' technology is capable of independent action and pretty much everything about Neom will be smart. The vegetables that will grow vertically from the sides of the buildings will be 'autonomously harvested and bundled' by robots and transported to 'community canteens' and 'co-living kitchens'. Residents will pay a subscription for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Neom will feature experimental technologies including, in a $5 billion partnership with a US company, the world's largest green hydrogen production facility, exploiting the area's solar and wind power.

It was the intention that the centrepiece of Neom will be The Line, an elongated 'linear' city. Sited close to the borders with Jordan and Egypt , it was going to stretch in an unbroken line from desert in the east, through a range of coastal mountains to the Red Sea in the west

Other planned innovations include a Jurassic Park-style island of robot reptiles, advanced surveillance systems using drones and ubiquitous microphones to 'guarantee the safety of the inhabitants' by monitoring their every move, and holographic teachers ready to teach on demand in schools.

MBS even wants a beach where the sand glows in the dark. A giant artificial moon would light up each night and might even live-stream images from outer space.

MONEY NO OBJECT

Insiders say the money that has been hurled at Neom is jaw-dropping even by Saudi standards, much of it lavished on consultants whose ideas often survive a week or two before they're binned.

For instance, Silver Beach, a seaside community for at least 50,000 people, was inspired by the Cote d'Azur and designed by an Italian firm that specialises in creating superyachts. Instead of sand, the beach would have been crushed marble because it would shimmer silver in the sun.

This resort will feature 400 mansions, some up to 100,000 sq ft. Sources say Silver Beach was scrapped as it wasn't considered sufficiently 'distinctive'.

Given Saudi Arabia's shortage of homegrown engineering and design talent, vast sums are being splashed on attracting thousands of foreigners with $1 million tax-free, expenses-paid annual salaries for the most senior. In fact, the extravagance is so great that the project's chief executive, former Saudi oil engineer Nahdhmi al-Nasr, was said to keep a 'wall of shame' in his office listing departments that fail to spend their vast budgets.

GROWING PAINS

The project has been plagued by delays caused by the pandemic, recession, depressed oil prices and the reluctance of foreign investors to do business with the repressive Saudi regime. But the biggest headache has been the continuing exodus of foreign staff who have despaired of MBS's ever grander vision, not to mention his human rights record.

(British architect Lord Foster was among those who left the Neom advisory board following international outrage over Jamal Khashoggi's murder).

With MBS demanding daily updates and interfering on even small details, the reportedly volcanic temper of Neom chief Nadhmi al-Nasr and his failure to rein in MBS's fantasy has prompted dozens of senior staff to resign.

'We couldn't even estimate the build cost,' said a US hospitality expert who fled a job working on the ski resort after only five months. 'We were hanging buildings on the side of cliffs, and we didn't even know the geology.'

Another stumbling block has been the locals, around 20,000 tribespeople the government plans to relocate and compensate. Some have been digging in their heels and saying they won't be removed from ancestral lands: one who refused to back down was denounced as a 'terrorist' and killed by Saudi special forces.

It's not just people who will have to move. The vast development sits slap bang in the migration path of millions of birds, or at least its original blueprints did.

Next door Dubai has shown that modern cities can emerge from the desert in just a few decades - but, with yesterday's news that The Line may have reached the end of its line after a mile and a half – sceptics wonder whether Neom may prove to be beyond even the vast riches and vanity of the Saudi royal family.