I’m going to talk about Saudi Arabia’s $500 Billion Mega City NEOM.
When I first read about NEOM, it reminded me of Wakanda.
Wakanda is a fictional African Nation from the Marvel Universe home to the Black Panther and is the most technologically advanced country in the world.
And NEOM hopes to be the most advanced city in the world someday.
According to the discoverNEOM.com’s press release, NEOM will be so advanced, it’s possible that the robots may outnumber humans.
How does Saudi Arabia plan to build the real life Wakanda?
Let’s find out!
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Alright, before we get started, let’s talk about Special Economic Zones.
Special Economic Zones are areas within a country’s boarders that have different laws than the rest of the country. Typically the variants in laws or policies involve investing, taxation, trading, quotas, customs and labor regulations and this is to encourage businesses to establish themselves in the zone.
The zones are created for various reasons, such as increased trade, increased investment, job creation.
Dozens of countries in the world have special economic zones, including China, Mexico, Greece, India, Poland and many more.
And Saudi Arabia wants to establish their own Special Economic Zone in NEOM.
They want to do this to lessen their reliance on Oil and add diversity to their revenue stream.
Over the years, the price for oil has dropped significantly which has really hurt countries that rely on oil like Saudi Arabia.
Gasoline and Diesel fueled vehicles have gotten more efficient, and have even started to shift toward hybrid or electric motors all together lowering the demand for Oil.
Also, the United States has recently produced more oil than ever before.
Matter of fact, the US is projected to hit an all-time high in production in 2018 at 9.7 million barrels per day.
Lastly, there are a lot of skepticism whether Saudi Arabia has as much oil reserves as they claim.
This is because in 1989, Saudi Arabia changed their estimated oil reserves from 170 billion barrels to 260 billion barrels without explaining the adjustment.
On top of that, the current estimates of their reserves remain around 260 today, even though they have consumed and exported 94 billion barrels since 1989.
Whether or not Saudi is running out of oil or not, they have good reason to want to make drastic changes to diversify their revenue streams.
So, on October 24th, Prince Mohammad bin Salman announced the Mega City NEOM.
The name NEOM means “New Future” and comes from two words and two languages.
First is the Greek word NEO meaning New and then the M stands for the Arabic word Mostaqbal, meaning Future.
It will operate as an independent economic zone – with its own laws, taxes
and regulations.
NEOM will be massive, at over 10,000 miles or over 26,000 km, it will be more than 33 times larger than New York City and a little less than Massachusetts.
Located in the North-West corner of Saudi Arabia, NEOM loosely connects the 3 continents of Africa, Asia and Europe and hopes to be a leading global hub, 70% of the world’s population will be able to reach it in under eight hours.

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