You announce something enormous. Then you scale it back significantly.
Iconic megaprojects worth hundreds of billions—The Line, The Cube, Trojena ski resort—are being abandoned, downsized, or transformed into modest alternatives. Pattern repeats decades-old Saudi strategy: massive PR announcements followed by scaled-back execution, driven by unrealistic market assessments and sycophantic advisory culture.
- The Cube, a 50 billion-dollar megastructure, was completely abandoned
- The Line, a 170-kilometer straight-line city, is being transformed into something far more modest
- The LIV Golf circuit cost 5 billion dollars and generated neither economic benefit nor prestige
- Trojena ski resort was downsized after the 2029 Asian Winter Games were moved to Kazakhstan
- The sovereign wealth fund holds nearly 1 trillion dollars
Saudi Arabia is drastically reducing spending on Vision 2030's most ambitious projects like The Line and The Cube, shifting from grandiose announcements to smaller, more pragmatic initiatives amid oil price volatility and failed foreign investment targets.
A decade ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled a vision for Saudi Arabia that read like science fiction. The plan, called Vision 2030, promised to remake the kingdom through extraordinary megaprojects—structures so monumental they would reshape not just the nation but the world. Backed by a sovereign wealth fund holding nearly a trillion dollars, the ambition seemed limitless. Now, with four years left until 2030, the reality has caught up. The kingdom is quietly dismantling or drastically shrinking the very projects that once defined its transformation.
The Line was supposed to be the crown jewel: a city stretching 170 kilometers in a perfectly straight line across virgin desert in the kingdom's northwest, redefining urban living itself. The Cube would have been a structure twenty times larger than the Empire State Building, housing apartments and offices at an estimated cost of fifty billion dollars. Trojena, a year-round ski resort in the mountains, would have been a mini-St. Moritz in the Arabian highlands. These were not modest proposals. They were declarations of intent, backed by glossy renderings and breathless press coverage that mixed genuine wonder with barely concealed skepticism.
Now The Cube has been scrapped entirely. The Line is being transformed into something far more conventional. Trojena, which was supposed to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, has been downsized after those games were moved to Kazakhstan. The LIV Golf circuit, a five-billion-dollar attempt to establish Saudi Arabia as a sporting superpower, has been quietly reassessed as a failure that generated neither economic benefit nor prestige. These are not minor adjustments. They represent a fundamental retreat from the vision that defined the crown prince's rule.
Ellen R. Wald, author of "Saudi, Inc.," has watched this pattern repeat for decades. "It's the same script," she explained. "You announce something enormous. Then you wait, and you scale it back significantly. It happens over and over." This is not new to Saudi Arabia. In the 2000s, under the previous king, the kingdom launched an "Economic Cities" program with similar goals: diversify away from oil, attract foreign investment, create jobs for a growing youth population. The most ambitious was King Abdullah Economic City on the Red Sea coast, which received one hundred billion dollars in investment. It was built, but it never became the business and tourism hub it was meant to be. The pattern is consistent: grand announcements, massive spending, disappointing results.
The reasons are both financial and structural. Oil prices collapsed before the current Middle East conflict, draining even Saudi Arabia's extraordinary reserves. Foreign investment in these visionary projects never materialized at the scale the kingdom expected. But there is a deeper problem, one that Wald identifies in the culture surrounding these initiatives. "Where did they think the market was?" she asks. "Who told them this was possible?" There is, she suggests, a pervasive culture of deference. People tell the king what he wants to hear. Consultants, eager to secure lucrative contracts, do the same. Foreign companies, unwilling to risk profitable deals, ask no hard questions. The result is projects built on fantasy rather than market reality.
The crown prince inherited a system in urgent need of reform when he became the kingdom's de facto ruler in 2017. The Vision 2030 initiative was designed to transform Saudi Arabia across three dimensions: economic, political, and social. But the execution has been complicated by the crown prince's own actions. Shortly after taking power, he ordered the mass detention of senior officials and businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, presented as an anti-corruption campaign but widely viewed as extortion. The brutal assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018 cast a shadow over his reputation that has never fully lifted. These actions, according to human rights activist Abdullah al-Ouda, whose father remains imprisoned since 2017 on charges of inciting revolt, have had a chilling effect on foreign investment. "In the long term, it actually drove investors away," al-Ouda said. "When there is no predictability, someone can be an investor one day and arbitrarily arrested the next. Nobody wants that."
The kingdom is now reframing the pullback as strategic evolution rather than retreat. Yasir al-Rumayyan, who controls the sovereign wealth fund, recently announced a new five-year plan focused on "increasing efficiency" and ensuring "sustainability of financial resources." Saudi consultant Thamer Shaker describes it as a natural progression "from an ambition-driven phase to an execution-driven phase." Some projects continue: the revitalization of Diriyah, the ancient capital; the Six Flags Qiddiya City theme park; the transformation of AlUla, a historic site in the north that has already cost billions and is being positioned as a model for future development. These are more modest, more achievable goals. The kingdom has also secured the 2034 FIFA World Cup, a genuine prize that will require significant investment but is at least grounded in existing infrastructure and proven demand.
Mate Szalai, an expert on Gulf politics and economics, suggests the kingdom's newfound willingness to acknowledge mistakes is useful for diplomats and foreign officials, but it may not be enough to restore investor confidence. "A disciplined prioritization can actually increase investor confidence," he said. "But the international conversation is shifting from 'How important are the announcements?' to 'How reliable is the execution model?'" The war in the Middle East has added another layer of uncertainty. Before the conflict, the kingdom was positioning Neom as a center for artificial intelligence and other substantial industries. That message has already shifted. "This indicates a certain strategic confusion," Szalai observed, "but it's also a positive sign that Saudi authorities know they need a new plan."
For the crown prince, the retreat from megaprojects is presented as pragmatism, not failure. The kingdom does not answer to its citizens for the billions spent on projects that may now exist only on the internet. The crown prince's popularity among young Saudis remains high, which allows the leadership to discard these ambitions as easily as torn paper. The great figures of sport, entertainment, and the arts who came to depend on Saudi money now face a new reality: the tap has been reduced to a trickle, or closed entirely. The question that remains is whether the kingdom can build genuine economic diversification on smaller, more realistic foundations, or whether Vision 2030 will ultimately be remembered as an elaborate fantasy that briefly captured the world's imagination before colliding with the constraints of geography, market forces, and the limits of even extraordinary wealth.
Citas Notables
It's the same script. You announce something enormous. Then you wait, and you scale it back significantly. It happens over and over.— Ellen R. Wald, author of Saudi, Inc.
In the long term, it actually drove investors away. When there is no predictability, someone can be an investor one day and arbitrarily arrested the next.— Abdullah al-Ouda, human rights activist
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did Saudi Arabia think it could build a city in a straight line across the desert and have it work?
Because they had the money, the political will, and no one around them willing to say it wouldn't work. When you have a trillion dollars and absolute power, the usual market constraints disappear. The problem is they don't disappear forever.
So this is about yes-men?
Partly. But it's also about a fundamental mismatch between what money can buy and what money can create. You can build a structure. You can't build demand for it if the demand doesn't exist. Foreign investors didn't show up at the scale they expected.
What about the human rights angle? Does that matter to investors?
It matters more than the kingdom wants to admit. When you detain hundreds of officials without due process, when you kill a journalist, when you imprison activists—investors notice. They want predictability. They want to know their money won't be seized or their executives arrested on a whim.
Is this a failure, then?
It depends on what you measure. The kingdom did change. Women can drive now. There's entertainment and culture that didn't exist before. But the economic transformation—the whole point of Vision 2030—that's only happened partially. And the political repression never stopped.
So what comes next?
Smaller projects, more realistic timelines, less grandiose announcements. The kingdom is learning to walk before it tries to run. Whether that's enough to actually diversify the economy away from oil—that's still an open question.
And the crown prince?
He remains popular with young Saudis. He can afford to abandon these projects without answering for the money. That's the privilege of absolute power. But it also means he can't learn from failure the way democracies do—through accountability.