In 2017, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious, young leader, Mohammed bin Salman, unveiled Neom: a futuristic new city Saudi Arabia would build in the desert. Neom would be a hotspot for tourism like the French Riviera, a center of innovation like Silicon Valley, and a global melting pot like Dubai. It would help transform the Saudi economy. But over the years, that already bold plan grew even more ambitious. In the first of two episodes about Neom, WSJ’s Rory Jones and Eliot Brown explain how an effort to pivot the Saudi economy away from oil grew to encompass plans for a desert ski resort and skyscrapers the length of Connecticut. Plus we hear from two people who uprooted their lives and moved to Neom to help make MBS’s dream a reality. Hosted by Ryan Knutson. Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to be with you this afternoon as we kick off a very special part of the program right now. As we watch something of a revolution happening here in Saudi Arabia.
It was 2017 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Inside the conference hall of a splashy hotel, Fox business host Maria Bartiromo was kicking off Saudi Arabia's big investor conference, sometimes called Davos in the Desert. Gathered beneath glittering chandeliers were the movers and shakers of the business world. They were there to witness a historic announcement.
Please welcome to the stage, ladies and gentlemen, His Royal Highness, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Addressing his audience in Arabic, Saudi Arabia's young leader, MBS as he's known, unveiled plans for a place he called Neom.
We have Neom for us.
Neom was a futuristic new city that Saudi Arabia would build from scratch in the middle of the desert. A flashy video drove the idea home.
Here we see the birth of Neom, the world's most ambitious project, a destination of the future, a vision that is becoming reality. We see a chance to design a better way of life with a blueprint for sustainable living.
There's this big video of what the northwest of his country is going to look like, and he's going to build Neom there, and it's going to be this futuristic city.
My colleague Rory Jones covers the Middle East. He remembers this announcement and what happened next.
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