IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Line is part of Saudi's controversial Neom mega-city project.

In 2021, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman revealed the country's plans to build The Line, a smart linear city that will be constructed vertically, have no roads or cars and run purely on renewable energy. Now, the Saudi government has released image renders of what The Line could look like once it's done. The city was designed to only be 200 meters (656 feet) wide, but 500 meters (1,640 feet) tall and 170 kilometers (105 miles) long. It will house multiple communities encased in a glass facade running along the coast and will eventually be able to accommodate up to 9 million residents.

Tonomus, a digital company part of Saudi Arabia’s new Neom city, has launched a data center.

Neom is a project aiming to construct a huge new smart city on the Red Sea coast in the northwestern Saudi province of Tabuk. The Neom company leading the project is wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg in October 2018 that Neom will be completed in 2025.

The companies this week announced the inauguration of a digital communications facility in the Octagon, a new industrial area of the city.

Saudi Arabia is likely to be ranked among the five top countries in e-governance by 2030 because of the changes currently being put in place by the government.

This is according to Ibrahim Al-Baez, former media professor at King Saud University, who said that the UN's 2014 report on e-government services around the world has seen the Kingdom ranked at 36 out of 193 countries surveyed, according to a report in a local publication recently.

TLC is a video service that will allow parents to interact with their babies using iPads, computers and videoconferencing system called Vidyo. The iPads also have speakers that give parents the opportunity to speak to their baby or their health care provider.

Webuild and its joint-venture partner Shibh Al Jazira Contracting Company (SAJCO) have signed a €1.4bn (£1bn) contract to design and build a new high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia.

The contract is for 57 kilometers of a high-speed railway along the Red Sea coast in Neom, the proposed ‘smart’ city complex planned for Tabuk Province in north-western Saudi Arabia.

In the desert sands of Saudi Arabia's deep north-west, thousands of workers are building a futuristic city that the kingdom says will be like no other.

Out of the ancient sands will emerge a hi-tech urban centre called The Line: zero-carbon with flying drones for taxis, holographs for teachers and even a man-made moon.

WeRide, a global leader in autonomous driving, joined hands with Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) for the first test ride of driverless robobus in the Middle East. WeRide had earlier launched the driverless robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi.

This is the first fully driverless test ride of robobus in the Middle East country which will run from today (September 19) until September 22.

NEOM is a new urban area planned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be built in its northwestern Tabuk Province. The area is bounded by the Red Sea to the south and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. NEOM's unique location will provide residents with enhanced livability. Its diverse climate offers both beaches and snow-capped mountains.

What does NEOM mean?

NEOM is derived from two words; the first three letters come from the Ancient Greek prefix neo – meaning 'new', while the 'M' is the first from 'Mustaqbal', an Arabic word meaning 'future'. The M is also the first letter of His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince and Chairman of the NEOM Company Board of Directors.

Plans for a new smart city, called The Line, in Neom are part of the 2030 Vision to embrace a new economic era in the kingdom

With plans under way to build Saudi Arabia's smart city Neom, it is set to be a place in the desert unlike anything else on Earth.

New satellite images have revealed a birds-eye view of the rise of Saudi Arabia's $500 billion Neom mega project.

Eng. Ali Bin Saleh Al-Soma, Yesser's Director General, pointed out that community participation is a style of work adopted by the Kingdom's government long ago. The workshop sought to reinforce channels of communications between government agencies and stakeholders using electronic and easy-to-use tools, he added.

As the CEO of Blok, a leading player in Cape Town’s urban property development landscape, Jacques van Embden has witnessed first-hand the transformative power of technology in shaping the city’s future. Jacques explores this trend and how, in recent years, Cape Town has been at the forefront of the smart city revolution, leveraging data and innovation to enhance the lives of its citizens while promoting sustainable urban development and environmental conservation.

At the heart of the smart city concept lies the notion of accessibility to information. Historically, understanding how citizens interact with their city was based largely on assumptions and intuition, given the sheer complexity that comes with trying to track the movements of millions of residents. But that’s starting to change thanks to the concept of the Smart City.