“A smart city on steroids” — what will it be like to live in Saudi Arabia’s $500bn digital oasis, Neom? (JMD quoted on Verdict)
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Scarlett is a freelance writer and journalist
Neom, a fairy-tale city in the sand “that heralds the
future of civilization”, for now
exists only in the
mind of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince,
Mohammed
bin Salman.
The city – dubbed Davos in the desert when plans were
unveiled last month – will be built
on twin ideals of
technological and ecological
innovation, a global mega-hub
and a catalyst for the country’s move
to a post-oil era, part
of its so-called Saudi Vision 2030.
The forward thinking and charismatic
crown prince has manufactured a
unique situation with
his plans for Neom
— the ability to shape a new
international city into whatever
form he chooses.
But are his plans merely a mirage or
do they mark a genuine
social and technological progression
for Saudi Arabia and the
wider region, and what will life be
like for Neom’s citizens of
the future?
Tech challenges
Plans for Neom’s state-of-the-art
technology fall into nine sectors;
energy and water, mobility, biotech,
food, advanced
manufacturing, media, entertainment,
technological and
digital sciences, and living.
Within these Neom wants to be at the
forefront of
developments in gene therapy,
genomics, stem cell research,
nanobiology, arid and seawater
farming, and bioengineering.
There are designs to make serious
advancements in all
industries, bleeding into the very
infrastructure of society.
Neom will not only have everything,
but it will be the best at
everything – or so we’re told.
Neom is expected to be “a smart city
on steroids”, according to
GlobalData tech analyst Josh Hewer.
While cities around the world have
begun incorporating smart
elements, due to their creaking
infrastructure they are not able
to harness information on the same
scale as Neom.
The proposed site will span 10,000
square miles – roughly 33
times the size of New York City and
large enough to
accommodate Singapore 37 times.
Another GlobalData tech analyst,
Hussein Ahmed, said, Neom
will go further than existing large
scale smart cities, and bin
Salman will be able to use them as a
blue-print for his vision.
Ahmed said:
He’s seen the progress of construction in Dubai and
Qatar
and all of these similar places. If the lessons are
learned
there, then the application can be easier, if it’s
done properly.
Hewer is sceptical however that the
first section of the city can be
completed by 2025, as planned.
Hewer said:
Neom is in line with a future city concept, and
it’s a viable
concept, I just don’t think it’s deliverable in a
decade.
Such technological advancements seem
to be almost inconceivable within the time frame the prince has
proposed, so much so that one commentator who works closely with the Kingdom
and approached by Verdict refused to comment on whether the
timeline is feasible.
Saudi Arabia does not take criticism
of its plans lightly.
However, if the prince is to be
believed, the city itself will be a robot
– it will be “robot number one”, as
bin Salman
told Bloomberg in an exclusive interview, “everything
will have a link
with artificial intelligence (AI),
with the Internet of Things (IoT)”.
Plans for connectivity within Neom go
far beyond what is currently
possible in the cloud, AI, and the
IoT.
While currently much of people’s
daily lives is contained within our
phones, our personal iCloud or
computer, these systems are
separate from one another.
In Neom all of this information will
exist on a single platform,
storing not simply photos and music
but also people’s cars and
medical information.
According to the prince, Neom will
have no supermarkets:
automation will seamlessly deliver
things directly to people’s
homes.
In this way Neom will be like a
living organism, growing with the
information pumped into it by its
inhabitants.
The extent of Saudi Arabia’s love of
robotics was seen a few weeks
ago when it became the first country
to grant citizenship to a robot.
One with the female name, Sophia.
The decision sparked criticism as
Sophia enjoys some luxuries that
Saudi women cannot – specifically,
going out without a headscarf
and without a male guardian, two
things that are currently illegal
for Saudi women.
Valuing robots on a similar — or
perhaps greater — level than
people is echoed in proposals to use
robots for many public sector
jobs in Neom.
The city will be home to a population
of robots that will outnumber
human inhabitants, with jobs ranging
from security and logistics, to
caring for the sick and elderly.
Neom is raising questions that were
previously the domain of sci-fi
authors – will a robot be able to
give the required care and comfort
that today seems far beyond what a
machine is capable of?
Plans like these are “symptomatic of
a future being built without understanding the practicalities from a service
provision point of
view”, according to Hewer.
The use of a robot workforce will
also not solve one of Saudi
Arabia’s biggest problems; that of
job creation.
James Dorsey, a specialist in Middle
Eastern studies at the
Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore, told Verdict:
Saudi Arabia is a country where somewhere between
51
percent and 60 percent of the population is under
30”. They
want jobs. Robots don’t create jobs. They take jobs
away.
According to the prince however, “it
is not Neom’s duty to create
jobs for Saudis. Neom’s duty is to be
a world hub.”
With the Kingdom’s apparent urgency
to shake off its dependency
on oil, Saudi Arabia seemingly has
few plans to find different job
opportunities for its citizens in
Neom.
However, with its promise of record
breaking theme parks and planned status as a media hub, Neom’s purpose appears
be the provision of entertainment rather than job opportunity.
Despite doubts swirling around bin
Salman’s plans for the city, Neom heralds social upheaval for the
conservative Saudis.
In order to become the global hub bin
Salman dreams of, Neom
must have fewer lifestyle
restrictions than Saudi Arabia.
Dorsey said: “What all of these
reform plans are about is regime
survival”, and the current ultra-conservatism
of the Kingdom is
not conducive to attracting foreign
investors.
We have already seen steps that were
unimaginable just a few
years ago.
The country has recently lifted a ban
on women driving and
earlier this year Saudi Arabia’s King
Salman bin Abdulaziz al
Saud allowed women access to
education and healthcare
without needing the consent of her
guardian.
But these are only small steps
towards the radical social shifts
a city such as Neom proposes.
Saudi Arabia’s regular use of the
death penalty, its ban on
cinemas and theatres, and the extreme
repression of women
that still exists puts it in stark
contrast to not only the Western
world but also places such as Qatar
and Dubai, which exercise
far more lenient social restraints.
The prince has said that he envisions
Neom as a place where a
more moderate form of Islam will be
practiced, though there is
no indication of what this will look
like – or how he will square
this with the country’s still
powerful clergy.
Nevertheless, Middle East specialist
at the London School of
Economics, Steffen Hertog, told Verdict these
proposals are
“politically entirely feasible … the
official religious
establishment is quite unlikely to
stand up to [the crown prince],
at least collectively”.
Both are holiday destinations that
use up vast amounts of power and
water but attract large amounts of
tourism cash and foreign investment.
The comparison to Dubai is inevitable
in the creation of a
megacity in the Middle East – though
Neom will eventually dwarf
its UAE rival.
Emerging as a major international
business and tourist destination
in the late 1980s, over the years
Dubai has built itself up into a
glittering metropolis that is home to
some of the world’s most lavish
hotels and decadent resorts.
Though bin Salman has said that Neom
would work to complement
rather than compete with Dubai,
Hertog said:
Unless Neom becomes highly specialized in areas not
already
covered by Dubai, some competition would probably
be
inevitable.
At present only 11 percent of Dubai’s
population are Emirati, with
expats making up the majority of the
inhabitants.
The incentive to move to Dubai is,
for most, financial rather than
cultural and many pull down double
the salaries they can back home.
However, many who are lured by a
quick income bump don’t fully
realise the cost of living in Dubai.
Stephanie, a resident of Dubai for
the past seven years, told Verdict
“people see a [salary] number and
it’s more than what they make at
home, but they don’t realise how
expensive living here is. The
cheapest school is around $13,000 a
year, per child. When people
see the salary, they don’t know
there’s so much more to it.”
The economics of the region suggest
prices would be similar in
Neom – and its technological
superiority means it could be far higher.
For some, the cost of moving to a
conservative Middle East city is
more than the unprecedented price of
amenities, with the so-called
dark side of Dubai the subject of
intense media scrutiny.
Johann Hari, a writer for the
British Independent online newspaper,
labelled Dubai a “slave society” due to the poor treatment of
workers,
many of whom were lured to the city
by the promise of high salaries
only to find their passports taken
away, their wages lowered, and
their working hours increased.
Their plight is not one that is
entirely ignored in Dubai, with
organisations such as Volunteer in
UAE, Adopt-a-Camp, or
Stephanie’s own Dubai Mums Helping
Hands that works to bring
water and fresh vegetables to the
workers’ community.
This situation will in all likelihood
replicate itself in Saudi’s city of
the future, Neom.
However, plans for Neom’s development
are not yet known – and it
is difficult to predict how exactly
the city will emerge from the dunes.
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