NEOM: City Of The Future or $600 Billion Stunt? | Answers With Joe

hi there so I'm coming at you from the wild jungles of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and if you're not from around here or haven't spent much time looking at a map around here I'm about to show you something that you cannot unsee this is a map of the major highways in the Dallas Fort Worth area take a second to ponder this map really take it in what do you see if nothing pops out at you maybe try turning it upside down give it a second let your mind go I know it might be hard to spot but there's there's a subtle likeness going on here it looks like something you might have seen before somewhere it's a dick also known as its proper anatomical term a pinor viewers this channel might notice a certain resemblance to a particular blue origin rocket I don't think this was done on purpose the fact of the matter is you've got two cities one a little bit bigger than the other and it has a lot of traffic going through so there's a few different highways that are required to to get all the traffic from one to the other and back and forth and actually you know if you expand the map out and it includes say the City of Denton in it then well then it starts to look like something you need to see a doctor about and this is not the first or only thing about Dallas that looks like male genitalia one of the most iconic parts of the Dallas Skyline is Reunion Tower sometimes known as the ball though living here you might sometimes hear it referred to as the Dallas phallus which again you might want to see a doctor if yours looks like that and in hindsight though decorating a city with phalluses is nothing new I actually visited Pompeii a few years back and that symbol was everywhere like like seriously it was all over the place and we still don't totally know why some archaeologists suggest that those were brothels or arrows pointing toward brothels because you know who doesn't like a little naughty history but some people think that it may have just been a good luck charm kind of like a horseshoe today kind of reflective of the hyper masculinity of Roman society and what good luck they turned out to be so I don't know maybe Dallas and Fort Worth accidentally designed their map to be in the shape of the world's biggest good luck charm or maybe we'll get wiped out by a volcano someday time will tell but the point of all that is that cities come in all shapes and sizes but one size that's never been done before is one ridiculously long line until now [Music] if I were to say the word Dubai you might get images of your head of gleaming spiers over-the-top vanity projects gold-plated cars and the kind of opulence that would make Ozymandias blush you know something like this [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] it's a bit much but it wasn't always like this for most of its history Dubai's economy was based around fishing and Pearls until artificial pearls were developed in Japan in the 1950s this created a bit of a crisis but their luck turned around in 1966 when up from the ground come a bubbling crude oil that is black gold Texas Tea they probably don't call it Texas Tea in the Middle East so yeah oil was discovered in the late Sheikh Rasheed bin Saeed al-maktoum began developing the city some of the major projects included the Dubai dry docks the jibble Ali Port Rasheed port and the Dubai World Trade Center and the city's experience explosive growth over the last half century its citizens and tourists are drawn to Modern Mega projects like Burj Al Arab the Palm islands and Burj Khalifa the world's tallest building at 828 meters and since then Dubai became the glittering star of the Arabian Peninsula attracting the Rich and Famous from all over the world to play in the playground of their dreams by the way I feel like a quick geography lesson is in order most Americans think of this as Saudi Arabia but this is the Arabian Peninsula Saudi Arabia is this part ringed by Yemen Oman the United Arab Emirates Bahrain and Qatar or gutter cutter I'm sorry no offense to anybody over there but nobody in the U.S knows how to say that an American trying to pronounce a word with a q in it that doesn't have a u following it is like a Texan trying to drive in the winter it's just bad things happen am I right hey yeah that's fair anyway not to be outdone Saudi Arabia saw the attention that Dubai was getting with the Burj Khalifa and decided to counter with the Jetta Tower plan to be the centerpiece of Jetta City in Saudi Arabia the tower will surpass Burj Khalifa's High by almost 200 meters that is when it's completed yeah the construction's been on hold since 2018 due to some labor disputes and then you know worldwide pandemic but yeah having the tallest building in the world has been the feather in the campus cities ever since the invention of the skyscraper and that's not likely to change but Jetta Tower is just one part of the Kingdom's plans to diversify itself away from an oil-based economy not just because they want to keep up with Dubai but also because I mean well the writing's on the wall so Saudi Arabia has turned to tourism and Technology as part of their future strategy in fact just recently they started allowing people with U.S UK and Shenzhen visas to visit this and many other reforms are part of their overarching Vision 2030 project this project includes 810 billion dollars of investments in culture entertainment and Leisure developments over the next decade with a goal to have 100 million visitors of the Kingdom by 2030. one of the projects is the Amala nicknamed the Middle East Riviera which will feature 2500 luxury hotel rooms when it's completed in 2028. another development is the kadia project an Entertainment Sports and arts destination and the Red Sea project which will offer visitors Resort holidays Island getaways and mountain and desert Adventures but there's one project that's received the majority of the investment money and it's an idea that aims to completely redefine what we think of as a livable and sustainable City and it's called the line the line also known as neon which is an acronym for new future combining the ancient Greek prefix Neo for new with the m as an abbreviation for the Arabic word mistakable which means future neon will be a 25 900 square kilometer city-state located in Saudi Arabia's tabuk Province near Jordan and Egypt this is a City built from scratch that if all goes to plan will be 33 times the size of New York City and yeah with 500 billion dollars going into its development there are some huge plans in place for the city of the future first of all the line why is it called the line well it's basically because it's literally A Hundred Mile Line it's meant to house one million residents spanning multiple communities and ecologies and connected by an ultra high-speed transit system underground similar to a hyperloop the city will be powered by 100 renewable energy with business regulations aiming to promote regenerative and sustainable practices developers claim that all your essential daily needs will be within a five minute walk wherever you happen to be because the city is going to be built around people and not cars in fact there will be no cars or traditional roads for that matter residents will live on the ground layer amongst Open Spaces Gardens parks and the natural environment underground will be a business-based layer containing offices retail restaurants and whatnot and under that will be a Transit layer where Freight will also move all out of sight finally everything will incorporate artificial intelligence and Robotics in order to learn and improve services to businesses and the people living in the communities on the line according to Joseph Bradley neum's head of technology and digital quote we're fundamentally building the world's first cognitive City empowering all this as an operating system called NEOS which according to Bradley they want to try to get data from 90 of the people living there in order to optimize their experience of living on the line more about that in a minute but as I mentioned the plan is for the city to be completely renewable and sustainable some examples include a desalination facility fully powered by renewable energy that will supply the whole neon region plans for recycling 100 of Wastewater and using it for irrigation energy supplied by solar and thermal winds and planes to use recycled materials and green production and product design Technologies for construction and Manufacturing neum also plans to be an international business and tourism destination up to 15 hotels a year are going to be built neon between 2023 and 2025 and then after that they're expecting 20 to 30 hotels going up every year neum also plans to have sort of an autonomous judicial system that operates outside the framework of Saudi Arabia's sort of famously strict Judicial System the idea being that that will promote more tourism and a lot more businesses to come in so I'm guessing no public beheading grounds on that pedestrian level all right so all of that is cool interesting ideas sure but uh competing with Dubai here we're gonna have to get a lot crazier than that oh you want to get crazy hold my Saudi champagne plans for neon also include an artificial Moon flying drone powered taxis glow-in-the-dark beaches cloud seeding to create rain holographic teachers that educate students a security and surveillance system that will use drones facial recognition technology and security cameras to constantly track every resident and visitor robotic servants to clean homes in a Jurassic Park inspired attraction with animatronic lizards like you do and if an article from The Wall Street Journal in 2019 is to be believed there are plans for the company's SoftBank to design quote a new way of life from birth to death reaching genetic mutations to increase human strength and IQ for residents I mean that sounds thorough I mean I can see some interesting ideas and and Concepts coming out of that and it might be an interesting experiment and everything but a city designed to collect data on ninety percent of its residents and then shape that environment to specifically alter their genes I mean I guess in a situation like that you just have to trust that the people who built the operating system have everybody's best interests at heart I mean that's that's the case here right that's the case here right well now might be a good time to talk about the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman because this is his baby he first announced the plans of the future investment initiative in Riyadh Saudi Arabia in 2017. he said quote this project is not a place for any conventional investor this is a place for dreamers who want to do something in the world Muhammad bin Salman who goes by MBS oftentimes has a fairly popular figure in Saudi Arabia and has been for a few years now especially amongst the younger Generations some of the reforms he's done that have put him in a positive light around the world include increasing women's rights like giving them the right to drive in Saudi Arabia creating a path for codified laws in in place and also just diversifying the kingdom away from an oil-based economy you know the world is getting greener and oil's best days are behind it and that's a good thing for the world but a bad thing for economies that rely on oil and this anxiety about what's going to replace oil in their economy has been kind of lingering over Saudi Arabian citizens for years now and what they were clamoring for was somebody with a vision for what things could look like past oil and MBS stepped up with a vision that vision is Vision 2030 and it earned him a lot of mirrors having said that there are others that would say that he's basically just another Middle Eastern dictator he's been accused of cracking down on opponents arresting and torturing activists and even using famine as a weapon the kingdom denies all of those by the way and he might be forgiven for thinking that all of these reforms are basically just damage control after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal khashoggi in 2018. investigations have shown that the Saudi state was responsible for his killing and that Muhammad bin Salman was liable as well did you order the murder of Jamal khashoggi foreign but I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government now for the line itself there's also the small problem that there are already people living there the Hawaii tribe has been living in this region for several generations and about 20 000 people face evictions for this project the Hawaii activist told the guardian in 2020 quote for the Hawaii top tribe neomes being built on our blood on our bones it's definitely not for the people living there it's for tourists people with money but not for the original people living there one Tribal member was killed by Saudi Security Forces after he recorded a video about his eviction the security forces claim that he shot at them first and others in Saudi Arabia claim that the billions of dollars being earmarked for this project to be better spent on cities and towns that already exist and that is an interesting debate it is not getting much AirPlay in Saudi Arabia though critics of the project tend to become silenced one way or another in fact khashoggi was often critical of the neon project writing in the Washington Post in 2017 quote can we really present a compelling image of a modern society complete with robots foreigners and tourists when Saudis many miles from neon are silenced is this truly modern Arabia so yeah MBS has its problem and the whole project has its problems and it's a little bit crazy but what if it works I mean a major business and tourism Hub being powered 100 by renewable energy serving as a platform for Innovation and lifestyle design I mean Mobility is going to be a huge thing in the coming years what kind of lessons could we learn from a city that goes completely carless without roads that moves everything underground I mean what if it turns out that a line is the perfect way to build a city but we never knew that because we've never tried it before and sure this is a major vanity project but couldn't that be said about a lot of the major Wonders of the World massive vanity projects have always been the way that powerful people leave their stamp on the world it's sort of a way to cheat death to to make sure that your name and Legacy live on into eternity look upon my Works ye Mighty and despair and it's also common for new leaders like MBS to Green Light massive projects to to boost the economy and pave a way for a better future and and you know have something great for their citizens to think of them by and that's not necessarily a bad thing and it's created wonders we still appreciate now hundreds even thousands of years later take Paris for example Paris is considered to be one of the world's most beautiful cities it became that way because Napoleon third nephew of the original Napoleon wanted the city to be more like London with grand Gardens and Parks tree-lined Avenues and a modern sewage system the transformation of Paris in the mid 19th century also faced criticism many accused George Eugene Houseman the man in charge of the renewal program of using social engineering to destroy areas where they're rich and poor mixed in creating new separate areas for the classes it was also outraged about how much money was spent on the project in today's terms it cost around 89 billion dollars all for the glory story of Napoleon III who most of you have never heard of and while a line might be new there are plenty of examples of cities that were built around specific shapes like Brasilia and Brazil that's shaped like an airplane chandragar in India that's designed like the human body in Copenhagen and Denmark that mimics five fingers or the aforementioned Dallas Palace as for my take you know I I find some of the ideas behind Neo I'm intriguing obviously I don't like the silencing and criticisms and the displacement of people and all that kind of stuff and I could see a getting scaled back maybe being 50 miles instead of 100 miles and I can see it growing outside of its original plan because that's kind of what cities do they're organic and they kind of grow but I will say I like the idea of all the freight and transport being moved underground a long time ago I visited Skywalker Ranch where lucasfilm was headquartered and one thing that stood out to me was that all the parking was underground and all the buildings were set up there were like five or six buildings they were all set up in such a way that you couldn't see any other buildings so when you looked out of the building it was kind of like you were just there in the middle of this beautiful pastoral scenery so I don't know this this kind of makes me think of that and and I think if they can make it work it would be really cool but seriously this is an interesting topic there's a lot to debate here do you think it's just ridiculous and dumb do you think that there could be some cool innovations that come out of it discuss and if you're the kind of person that feels like you need to take a shower after just hearing about this because why are we spending that kind of money on a giant vanity project when there are real problems in the world and people that need help first of all uh you're a good person if you think that second of all there is something you can do to make a difference and that is tab for a cause time for a cause is a browser extension that will pay a little bit of money to a charity of your choice every time you open a new tab in your browser like how many tabs they have open right now I'm working on like 30 or so and every single one of those could be giving a little something to a charity and here's the best thing it's not your money this all comes from ad revenues so it costs you nothing takes just minutes to set up and they've got 10 Charities you can choose from and from that point forward you're just helping people by doing exactly what you're going to do anyway in case you're wondering this adds up altogether they've raised over 1.2 million dollars for Charities and for back to school they're working with a group room to read to help 100 kids learn how to read by the way this campaign goes from the 25th to the 31st so if you're watching this on the day that this video comes out you've got literally like one day to do it so if you're interested might want to get on that but even if you missed that one there's plenty of other great Charities to choose from just pick whichever one you're most interested in anyway it's simple it costs you nothing and it makes a difference so if you're interested in it just take a look at the link that's right here on screen you can go there or I'll put a link down in the description go check it out big thanks to tab for a cause for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon that are forming an awesome Community doing cool stuff together and just helping me out quite a bit I do appreciate you guys there's some new members I got to murder the names real quick we've got Joshua Clark Reese Darren Bainbridge Linda Browning Justin Lilburn Daniel O'Brien wreckage writer nurse Diane Dave it syntax markhoffman.joanna Easton Dave and John Vance that might be the smoothest one of those I've ever done uh thank you guys for joining if you would like to join them get early access to videos get exclusive patreon content you can go to patreon.com answers with Joe as always please like and share this video if you liked it and if you're the first time seeing this maybe go check this one out because Google thinks that you might like this one or any of the others down there that have my little face on the thumbnails and if you enjoy them and you like what I do please I invite you to subscribe I come back with videos every Monday and a quick apology for any names and words that I might have mispronounced in this video I'm sure I did it plenty of times but thanks you guys for watching uh go out there have an eye opening rest of the week and I'll see you next Monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 708,559

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: CVmy1uWiQsI

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021