NEOM - what is happening in Saudi Arabia?

Unless you've been living under a rock in Dubai you would have heard the term NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s impressive sustainable destination concept by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. NEOM is an acronym for New Enterprise Operating Model and means “New Future”.
A first impression: Tesla's wet dream. In fact, paging through the info on this massive project they reference Tesla, Edison, Verne and Eiffel meeting together in Paris in 1889 to create a place on earth where nothing would be impossible. This is the blue print for NEOM.
But what are the features of this city of the future and how likely is it that it will meet the high expectation set by the pre-launch hype?
While sceptics might wave it off as an impossible - if you, like me have lived in a city like Dubai and seen what’s possible in in short increments of time  you’re going to be hyped to see this come to pass - plus its 500 billion cash injection doesn’t hurt either.
 
Here are the key features of this exciting project

• The destination itself will be climate controlled to be 10 degrees cooler than anywhere else in the GCC complete with long beaches, valleys and desserts cradles by majestic mountains.
• It will operate as the world’s first independent economic zone. With its own laws and regulations.
• It will be powered entirely by clean energy, think water, natural gases, solar, algae and hints at other kinds of “energy the world has yet to here of”.
• It will use 100% green transport systems.
• It promises to lead the way in state of the art technologies like seawater farming, solar powered greenhouses and vertical urban farms to deliver fresh local produce.
• There strategy refers to an open source platform, Virtual reality, the Internet of Things.
• The industrial district Oxagon is being hailed as a “comprehensive cognitive city” that will make use of Robots and AI.

 
Sounds impressive and inspiring to say the least, looks like I’ll be adding Saudi to the bucketlist after all..
 
Xx