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Neom – an entire new land, purpose-built for a new way of living
- egd 9y agoSo where the folks who haul the garbage get to live?
- davidcollantes 9y agoQuestion: - Which religion will be NEOM's? Everything else comes down from it.
- armandososa 9y agoI'm guessing secularity or humanism or maybe the church of reason?
- davidcollantes 9y agoIt is in Saudi Arabia.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoIs none an option?
- WalterSear 9y agoNot in Saudi Arabia.
- nkoren 9y agoI once filled out "None" for my religion on a Saudi visa. It was accepted and I had no problem whatsoever on my visit there, even discussing my alleged atheism openly with curious taxi drivers etc. Only later did I discover that atheism is considered a form of terrorism there, and is a capital offence. Still probably less controversial than what a truer answer would have been.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoTaxi drivers know what you put for religion on your visa?
- nkoren 9y agoNo, but every single one of them asked whether I was Muslim. Their responses to my answer ran the gamut. One, a conservative, was clearly perturbed by my answer and wanted to convert me, but lacked the English to do so. The best he could come up with was: "Muhammad Ali... strong! Muhammad Ali... Muslim!" Which I was happy to agree with, but just couldn't figure out how to make the next logical leap. Another, a liberal, told me that Saudi Arabia was unfortunately not a great place for non-Muslims, but that Dubai was amazing, everybody was treated equally there. As far as he was concerned, there was no difference between religions, and the only thing that mattered was whether you were a good person. Another pulled out a Black Sabbath tape that had been hidden under his seat, put it on, and started head-banging. Anyhow, on the street, religion wasn't a subject that anyone was particularly discrete about. Interestly, in professional environments (I was there to attend the Jeddah Economic Forum), it was never mentioned at all.
- pmarreck 9y agoI think "secular humanist" is a good start (and compatible with atheism as well as a number of other religions to varying degrees) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. The linked site is absolutely ridiculous in its lack of information which is a hallmark of concepts that overpromise via marketing and underdeliver by not shipping
- cwilson 9y agoI think you are being down-voted because others have pointed out this is a venture by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, so it will most definitely not be Secular humanism or anything close to it.
- pmarreck 9y agoWell then it's doomed to fail, frankly, because 1) it's an extra limitation on the behavior of people in their target market of "free thinking, creative individuals" (who will not appreciate arbitrary constraints on their behavior that are not based on secular ethical established facts), and 2) there is no rational evidence that living that way is somehow superior to something like secular humanism, in fact the evidence seems to indicate the opposite https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-secular-life/201410/secular-societies-fare-better-religious-societies https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-secular-life/201410... But I was not here to argue that. If this new "nation" wishes to be forward-thinking and open-mind-inviting, it needs to shake off the religion requirement.
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoIt's chaired by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, so Sunni Islam.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoThe prince does say "NEOM will be powered by clean energy, he said, and will have no room “for anything traditional.”" Seems unlikely he'd be able to establish something that has no room for anything traditional, unclear what he really intends to do.
- weego 9y agoIt's amazing how quickly the mind absorbs trends and makes assumptions. From the moment I started reading the top of the page I assumed this was going to be publicity for a new ICO raise.
- forkLding 9y agoBut its in Saudi Arabia, excuse me for saying this because I have lived in Bahrain where certain youtube channels are censored but still considered more open than other gulf countries, how do you access an open internet in neom?
- microcolonel 9y agoNot to mention, if there are any women in your life, they will be treated like children who must be under the constant supervision of the men in your family.
- JimboOmega 9y agoAnd I'm sure it will be super great for trans women and queer people in general...
- pimeys 9y agoAt least the video on their site was showing no sexual diversity. All I see is families with a mother and father. Gays, trans people or lesbians are nowhere to be seen.
- rtkwe 9y agoSo the FAQ does give a little hope for that and stuff like gay/trans rights. > WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE JUDICIAL AND REGUL ATORY FRAMEWORK THAT WILL GOVERN ALL CIVIL AND COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS IN NEOM? > NEOM will be the world’s first independent special zone spanning three countries, with a regulatory framework designed to adopt world-class investment laws that support the livelihoods of residents and the development of targeted economic sectors. The special zone will also adopt an autonomous judicial system subject to independent regulations and legislation, which will be drafted by investors in accordance with international best practice. The zone will be independent of the Kingdom’s existing governmental framework, excluding sovereign laws. Social norms in Neom will adopt leading practices to improve standards of livability for its residents and visitors. and clarifying 'independent systems' a little later: > The project will be developed within a specialized zone, independent of the Kingdom’s existing governmental framework, excluding sovereign laws, in regards to taxation, customs, labor laws, and other legal parameters pertaining to business. As such, a zone within an independent system gives industry the ability to manufacture and provide, goods and services at globally competitive prices So it sounds like they at least want to shed the more regressive parts of the traditional Islamic culture in Saudi Arabia to bring in international visitors who are reticent to visit or invest in Saudi Arabia because of the way the laws treat women/homosexuals/etc.
- bluetwo 9y agoA fool and his money...
- nategri 9y agoI see the new Bioshock is coming along nicely.
- rishabhd 9y agoBioShock:Saudi Edition
- newobj 9y agoA new land wherein your browser scroll is overridden.
- andrepd 9y agoPlenty of grandiose claims but little substance. What is this about? A pilot city for testing next-gen infrastructure technologies built from scratch?
- jpm_sd 9y agoSince the linked site contains almost no information, please read the Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/saudi-arabia-to-build-new-mega-city-on-country-s-north-coast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/saudi-ara... "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced plans to build a new city on the Red Sea coast, promising a lifestyle not available in today’s Saudi Arabia as he seeks to remake the kingdom in a time of dwindling resources."
- whipoodle 9y agoThanks. I was wondering whether this would be some neoliberal hellhole or something actually interesting.
- eradicatethots 9y agoNeoliberal hellhole?
- pmarreck 9y agoTell me more about this "neoliberal hellhole in the heart of Saudi Arabia"
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoIsn't that redundant? Saudi Arabia is the poster child of the Washington Consensus.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- api 9y agoThe petroleum era is ending, time to create a modern society...
- ktta 9y agoI'm not so optimistic. I think we've only begun to properly supplement the power requirements with solar power, etc. It'll be a while before the petroleum era ends. Maybe start talking about petroleum era going away when say, 10% of vehicles in US are running on electricity?
- pmarreck 9y agoThey should have called it LOTF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies) Or perhaps MUDW ("Muslim Utopia Doesn't Work")
- orasis 9y agoAs someone who lives semi-arid, good luck growing abundant food on this land. I have 12 acre feet of water rights on 58 acres in Montana and its still a lot of work. (For sale btw: It's fun as a giant playground http://www.eralandmark.com/listings/view/307976 http://www.eralandmark.com/listings/view/307976)
- redblacktree 9y ago> 12 acre feet of water rights on 58 acres Could you explain these terms better? How does that work? Thanks!
- danielvf 9y agoAn acre foot is a volume of water one acre, one foot deep, used over a year. In gallons, that’s 325,851 gallons per year per acre foot. The poster then can use about 4 million gallons of water per year for his land. When spread out over this amount of land, that’s about 66% of the amount of water needed for a suburban grass lawn in a hot climate.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoNot parent, but thanks for the detailed response. One thing though: > that’s about 66% of the amount of water needed for a suburban grass lawn in a hot climate I'm not sure how to related to this. If a person wanted to grow food in a hot climate they'd probably build tunnels or shaded houses or some such, or grow olives or some other food plant suited to the conditions, using drip irrigation. Where as a suburban lawn is typically exposed to direct sun light and watered in a typically less than optimal way.
- toisanji 9y agocouldn't find your email, please ping me about your land, its in my profile.
- DubiousPusher 9y agoHehe, know how you feel. My family has about 400 plus 1600 BLM lease the only use of which is grazing. At least the grazing lease pays BLM and the taxes.
- eduren 9y agoFrom their FAQ: >THE TERM “INDEPENDENT SYSTEMS” IS A LITTLE AMBIGUOUS. WHAT EXACTLY WILL THE PROJECT BE, A FREE ZONE, TRANSIT ZONE, ETC.? The project will be developed within a specialized zone, independent of the Kingdom’s existing governmental framework, excluding sovereign laws, in regards to taxation, customs, labor laws, and other legal parameters pertaining to business. As such, a zone within an independent system gives industry the ability to manufacture and provide, goods and services at globally competitive prices. >WHAT DOES “EXCLUDING SOVEREIGN” MEAN? “Sovereign laws” refer to everything related to the military sector, foreign policy, and sovereign decisions – all of which will remain at the government of Saudi Arabia’s discretion. Yeah, that'll be a no from me dawg. It's certainly an interesting project, but I doubt it will draw the kind of international appeal they are hoping for. Dubai 2.0 basically.
- jstanley 9y agoAgreed. The only thing interesting about the project would be the opportunity to live somewhere that doesn't have traditional attitudes towards having a military, dealing with foreign countries, etc. Completely uninteresting otherwise. Just go to any trendy city. Where's my libertarian utopia??
- eduren 9y ago>Where's my libertarian utopia?? The moon, if Heinlein was right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
- cannonedhamster 9y agoDepends, which version of libertarian do you believe in? The ultra-right libertarians that align with Christian conservatism and the prepper ethos or...uh...the ones who are big on Porcupines. I think the first group far outweighs the second group as a voting block. If the former I'd say the U.S. is right what Ted Cruz and the Tea Party crowd want right now. Environmental regulations, social safety nets, and public institutions are getting rolled back so that taxes can go down. Texas seems to be a hotbed for this. If you're for the latter, New Hampshire is probably okay, but you'll still get quite a few of the former.
- checker 9y agoIt's conveniently not mentioned in the marketing that it's being established in Saudi Arabia. It will be interesting to see what culture is established when/if the city becomes legitimate.
- Danihan 9y ago100% libertarian, I'm sure.
- dabbledash 9y agoI guess I just missed the section on 'how you will be governed' and 'how will we care for the old / poor / infirm'.
- mozumder 9y agoNot going to work without major university presence nearby.
- kissickas 9y agoKAUST is nearby. Founded in 2009 so it's still new but it has the sixth-biggest endowment in the world. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Science_and_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Sc... : "It was founded in 2009 and provides research and graduate training programs using English as the official language of instruction. It was announced in 2013 that KAUST had one of the fastest growing research and citation records in the world and in the 2016 Nature Index Rising Stars was ranked #19 in the world of the fastest rising universities for high quality research output. KAUST was ranked as the world's top university in citations per faculty ranking indicator as per QS World University Rankings for 2015-2016 and 2016-2017."
- mozumder 9y ago940 students and 1200 alumni. Meanwhile, a public university in the US might typically have 40,000 students, and there are tons of them. You really need a major university presence for this to work. If Saudi Arabia wants to compete economically, they need a good half-million university students.
- narvind 9y agoThanks but no thanks, crown prince. Good luck with your project!
- mapcars 9y agoEverything looks perfect, we only need to find perfect humans to complete the project.
- mempko 9y agoSociety run by technocrats using state capitalism. I've think I've seen that before... Is this Soviet Union 2.0? Maybe we have the technology to build it now?
- fortythirteen 9y ago> Society run by technocrats More like a society run by theocrats, allowing technologists to live and work there, with a handshake promise to be "more socially open minded".
- mempko 9y agoI think you are right. Soviet Union was an atheist society. What would the marriage of ruling by theocracy and managing by technology be called? Let's call it Theotechnocracy?
- fortythirteen 9y agoThat's pretty much what communism/stalinism is. The party leader is the godhead and everything is managed by technology (aka, bureaucrats). Being arrested for blasphemy is really no different than being "re-educated".
- L_Rahman 9y agoSince the person behind this project is the sovereign of a nation-state, perhaps they should build a new way of living in their existing cities and society. A good place to start would be enshrining basic civil liberties and not bombing civilians in a neighboring country.
- derefr 9y agoEven a dictator still rules at the whim of the people charged with implementing their rules. Sometimes it’s impossible to get the power structure below you to change, even when you can order executions, because the incentives are broken and will keep installing people with desires contrary to your own. The point here, then, might be to build an “insulated” city with a more direct power structure, without the involvement of consolidated power-bases like ministries or civic departments. Immigration to the new zone could be filtered to only allow in people that believe more in the lawful rule of the sovereign themselves (maybe with something like a democratically-elected governor in between) than the rule of government as a whole; and then, eventually, a military et al could be raised from that power-base to convert the rest of the country to the “new” model.
- L_Rahman 9y agoThis is a fair response and one that lifts from "disruption" like thinking processes. I've made a personal decision however to retreat from "realpolitik" like political analyses because it requires me to play mind games about the probable intentions of the decision maker, their constraints, and the possible outcomes of the decision they made. Holding people to a set of normative values that I believe to be meaningful has been a more useful (if more blunt) meta-construct* * this conversation has me wondering if it might be time to revisit that position
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Since the person behind this project is the sovereign of a nation-state No, the son and heir apparent (and First Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Defense, and...) of the sovereign of a nation state. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are not the same person.
- zokier 9y agoDoes anyone know why Saudi Arabia does not have a big space program? Seems like more reasonable way to spend exorbitant amounts of money than building paradise cities in the middle of a desert.
- fortythirteen 9y agoThe last person I would trust to build the free, open society of the future is the monarch of a country that still executes people for being gay.
- jackjeff 9y agoApostasy and consuming any kind of drugs is also punishable by death. Drinking alcohol and having sex outside marriage are severely reprimanded. And you also have all the vexations of "normal" regular life. Women were not allowed to drive at all until recently. Movie theaters simply do not exist in Saudi. Movies that you can legally watch (at home) are heavily censored (so piracy is your only option). And you have segregated areas for males and females in restaurant and most shops... A project like Neom would totally work if they promised the locals that none of the bullshit rules would apply. Young Saudis would just swamp the place and work their asses off to make it happen... but I doubt the old religious guard would like that. Just marketing BS. They'll just build fancy buildings in the desert at great expense, and nothing will come out of it.
- d--b 9y agoThis looks like the Saudis want to have their own Qatar-like state...
- jasim 9y agoCall it Kinakuta, untangle it from religion and misogyny, have more universities than mega-malls, and setup a democracy. "“Perhaps I can make an analogy to Go—though chess would work just as well. Because of our history, we Kinakutans are well-versed in both games. At the beginning of the game, the pieces are arranged in a pattern that is simple and easy to understand. But the game evolves. The players make small decisions, one turn at a time, each decision fairly simple in and of itself, and made for reasons that can be easily understood, even by a novice. But over the course of many such turns, the pattern develops such great complexity that only the finest minds—or the finest computers—can comprehend it.” The sultan is gazing down thoughtfully at the Go board as he says this. He looks up and starts making eye contact around the room. “The analogy is clear. Our policies concerning free speech, telecommunications, and cryptography have evolved from a series of simple, rational decisions. But they are today so complex that no one can understand them, even in one single country, to say nothing of all countries taken together.”" - Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon.
- rkwasny 9y agoIs it only me looking for an ICO details at the bottom of the page? :)
- ktta 9y agoWell, here's the whitepaper - http://www.discoverneom.com/content/pdfs/NEOM_FACT_SHEET_ENGLISH.pdf http://www.discoverneom.com/content/pdfs/NEOM_FACT_SHEET_ENG...
- mcrowson 9y agoWelcome to Zombocom http://www.zombo.com/ http://www.zombo.com/
- pmarreck 9y agoThe impossible IS attainable at neom.com
- nikolay 9y agoI don't think Saudi Arabia and innovation can exist in the same sentence!
- neom 9y agoHmmmmmm.... :|
- DubiousPusher 9y agoI think there's a pretty good chance that this succeeds wildly at everything it advertises. Unfortunately it doesn't advertise democracy, equality, upward mobility, stability, justice, diversity or even freedom. But in this world, are there enough rich, heteronormal, globe trotters that fetishize clean energy, "clean" food and electric cars to make something like this a success? Probably.
- xg15 9y agoIndeed. The whole thing sounds less like Dubai 2.0 and more like Singapore 2.0 to me.
- bitwize 9y ago"Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... NEOM."
- ythn 9y agoThe quality/success of a future project is inversely proportional to the glamour of its initial marketing. The marketing seems just a little too polished on this one. Reminds me of a kickstarter scam.
- jshaqaw 9y agoThis looks like the Fyre Festival of country startups
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoThe video on this page had some eerie similarities to the Fyre Festival deck.
- manyoso 9y agoSo essentially it sounds like an experiment: Does a place designed for the rich and privileged, by the rich and privileged equal a rich and privileged utopia?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoIn Utopia there are no poor people.
- dcre 9y agoIt took me a long time to figure out whether this was a parody.
- philippnagel 9y agoThe website of their PR firm greets me with this: http://archive.is/B7aUx http://archive.is/B7aUx.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoAre you claiming that it is NOT important to have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed.... That's a bold move Cotton.
- nkkollaw 9y agoIs this a startuptorship, then? One startup (read corporation) that rules a whole country. Finally! /s
- Nux 9y agoStopped reading at "Saudi Arabia", what a pile of &%#+.
- immutable_ai 9y agoFascinating. It is good to see that some people are actually dreaming and acting on a bigger scale than rent seeking mobile apps.
- tahw 9y agoLMAOing at the idea of a "free nation" in which saudi arabia--one of the most insanely conservative nations on earth--has total sovereignty.
- dreamcompiler 9y agoThe Arab countries are not stupid; they know the oil is going to run out and they're trying to plan for the future. Nevertheless this sounds like yet another Masdar City, which has been mostly a failure [1]. (One of the many problems with MC is that PV panels in a landscape of blowing sand have to be swept daily or they stop working.) [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/16/masdars-zero-carbon-dream-could-become-worlds-first-green-ghost-town https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/16/masdars-...
- Apocryphon 9y agoWill it be a rival to the new Cairo mega-city? http://www.cnn.com/style/article/egypt-new-capital/index.htm.. http://www.cnn.com/style/article/egypt-new-capital/index.htm....
- azinman2 9y agoAn entirely new city, centrally planned from scratch by developers and investors without any organic growth, no history, no culture, an initial population of zero, in Saudi Arabia that costs half a trillion to make. What could possibly go wrong?