Cyberpunk Dreams in Saudi Arabia

In late 2025, word began leaking that progress on The Line, a futuristic project planned for northwestern Saudi Arabia, had stalled. This came as little surprise to many who had followed the wildly ambitious plans for the desert city. As urbanist scholar Federico Cugurullo and geography researchers Isobel Lee and Rebecca Weir found when speaking with people involved in The Line between 2022 and 2024, the project represented a strange mixture of western science fiction aesthetics and authoritarian ambitions.