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A zine produced by members of ARCH 5602, Kean University School of Public Architecture

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Vol. 1

Letter from the Editor - 
Davis Richardson
Reclaiming 432 Park Ave - Kamila Diaz Calderon
Ultrathin Worlds - 
Anyi Liranzo-Payamps
Finance Over Function - 
Jared Britton
The Housing Shepherd - 
Kacper Kowal
Livestream Dystopia - 
Jake Haenggi
VR Architecture - 
Ryan Barbour
Metaverse Architecture - 
Danny Gavino
From Fi-Fi to De-Fi - 
Scott Gleason
Realistic or Reality? - 
Stephan Argent
Dubaifying Saudi Arabia- 
Rasha Labibidi
NEOM’s Sustainability Mirage - Andrew Lazarte
Living in the Model - 
Bryan Tome
Planting the Illusion - 
Lauren Taravella
Critical Regionalism - 
Nolan Aucone

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CGZ-VOLNO1-ARCH5602-FA2025-E11

NEOM’s Sustainability Mirage:
Andrew Lazarte



The Mirage of the Future

Supporters of NEOM have said that it is nothing less than a plan for how society will develop in the future. It is being advertised as a smart, zero-emissions city that will be powered by green energy sources and have no cars or roads. It is also meant to protect 95% of the land and sea around it, so it should be a peaceful mix of nature, technology, and city life.

There are, however, critics who say that NEOM’s “utopian” image is just a thin layer—a marketing story that hides major structural problems. In this essay, I make the case that NEOM’s supposed sustainability is just a front, a “mirage” that hides its political ambitions, social unfairness, environmental recklessness, and economic arrogance. The famous linear city, The Line, is not an actual act of urban planning. Instead, think of it as making a press statement, public relations theater, and a risk that will probably have a real, high cost to the environment, to future generations, and to the environment.

The Speculative Architecture of NEOM: Spectacle over Substance

The Line is NEOM’s main idea. It is a 170-kilometer-long, 200-meter-wide, and 500-meter-high megastructure that will purportedly hold up to 9 million people in a car-free vertical city with high-speed rail and 100% renewable energy. This bold plan is more science fiction or a vision of utopia than it is a realistic, step-by-step urbanism, more reminiscent of architectural dreams from the past, like the huge monolithic buildings of the middle of the 20th century or other would-be utopias based less in reality than in propaganda.

The Line’s goal doesn’t meet real, contemporary urban needs like affordable housing, fixing up old infrastructure, adapting to the local climate, or slow but steady growth. Instead, it is a show of power, modernity, and control. Global media, investors, and politicians are drawn to the mirrored walls, verticality, a futuristic aesthetic, and a techno-utopian promise, but they risk diverting ecological reasoning and the messy, unpredictable realities of social life.

Indeed, critics call The Line a “massive barrier cutting through the natural landscape,” which could make it much harder for animals to migrate across the desert, for plants and animals to move around, for wind and weather patterns to be followed, and for birds to fly.1 Constructing such a building requires a huge number of carbon-intensive materials, like concrete, steel, and glass, counter to the supposed main idea of zero-impact sustainability.

The Line and its siblings — luxury islands, man-made getaways, and floating industrial zones — are not realistic solutions to problems that cities already face. Instead, they are speculative architecture — architectural theater — where appearances are reality. There’s a chance that these structures won’t work as well as advertised once they’re built. They might not be able to handle the ups and downs of social life, the weather, the environment; and they certainly won’t live up to the utopian claims made in rendering videos.

NEOM’s Sustainability Rhetoric: Greenwashing or Genuine Transformation?

The story of NEOM is full of ecologically sound ideas, like using green energy, protecting and restoring natural habitats, living in close quarters, connecting to nature, and causing as little disruption as possible via relatively small footprints. Behind the marketing, though, there is a sharp contrast between what is said and what is true. Several important topics stand out: despite claims to protect 95% of land and sea, the actual build sites are not empty but fragile ecosystems: desert landscapes, coastal zones, coral reefs, mangroves, and marine wildlife in the Red Sea, where many rare or endangered species live.

Huge digging, like in mountainous areas for the planned alpine resort, dredging, changing the shape of the coast, and clearing land for development could permanently change habitats, microclimates, and biological processes. Additionally, the huge, reflective walls in The Line could be very dangerous for birds and other animals; they could crash into them or get lost.

The claim that NEOM will “protect nature, not pave it” doesn’t make sense: the amount of work that needs to be done for such a huge urban project is, at its core, antithetical to protecting the environment.  It doesn’t matter if the city is powered by renewable energy sources; the process of making it uses a lot of carbon-intensive materials.

Making cement, steel, and glass all release CO₂ into the air. Estimates for just The Line show that materials and construction will release more than 1.8 gigatons of CO₂.2  This is a huge difference from NEOM’s claim that their buildings will have no effect on the environment. Building in remote desert areas also requires transportation of materials over long distances, erecting infrastructure that uses a lot of energy and water (desalination plants, energy production, waste treatment), and other logistical considerations. All these things add to the carbon footprint and damage the environment. While many still believe that NEOM will fully switch to renewable energy sources (like its hydrogen project) and provide a sustainable water supply (like carbon-free desalination), skepticism is warranted as no desalination operation at this scale driven only by renewables has been proven to work yet.3

The energy needs of a megacity with millions of people, especially one with high-end amenities like resorts, man-made islands, and comfort all year round may be much higher than what green energy and hydrogen infrastructure can safely provide. NEOM’s sustainability plan could be based on made-up technologies and perfect (unachievable) efficiency, which is a model too unstable to trust. If something seems like significant progress, it might just be greenwashing—using nice pictures and promises to sell a project that isn’t good for the environment.

Social and Ethical Costs: Displacement, Labor Abuse, and Authoritarian Spectacle

Beyond environmental critique, NEOM embodies social injustices and political opacity. The vision of a gleaming future is shadowed by darker realities.

Displacement of Indigenous Communities
NEOM was not a greenfield; people lived in the area set aside for the project. Native groups, like the Huwaitat tribe, have lived on the land for centuries. According to multiple reports, members of this tribe have been moved against their will so that building can begin; some fought back. As a result, people were arrested, jailed, and even killed.4

This violence shows an unpleasant truth: NEOM’s vision for the future is based on force, spying, and eviction—a modern version of colonial land theft hidden behind techno-utopian language. The breach of ethics is made worse by the fact that affected groups were never involved in any kind of planning process.

Labor Conditions and Worker Safety
Migrant workers from all over the world, usually poorer countries, are very important to the building of NEOM. But reports say that working conditions have been dangerous, harsh, and unfair. Internal audits and reviews by outside media have found alarmingly high rates of deaths, accidents, suicides, and general neglect at work.5 The spectacle of NEOM—its fancy resorts, mirrored towers, and futuristic drawings—comes from the hard work and pain of workers who are often not seen. This evokes important moral questions: can a “sustainable city of the future” really be legitimate if it is built on forced migration and exploiting workers?

Political and Symbolic Uses
NEOM is more than just a building project; it’s also a political statement. It was a statement of ambition from the people who supported it; it is paid for by oil income, though meant to be a move away from fossil fuels. It was also linked to changing geopolitics, attracting global investment and tourism. In this way, NEOM is more of a monument to power than a city.

The futuristic buildings in NEOM, like the floating factories, ski camps in the desert, and mirrored towers, are meant to be symbolic. It sends a message of modernity, technical mastery, and direction. But symbols don’t last. The object of society should be fairness, the health of the environment, and long-lasting infrastructure. NEOM doesn’t seem like a civic project anymore; it looks more like a state-run show, an attempt to change the image of a petro-state by using building as propaganda to change the story of wealth and power.


The Risks of Technological Utopianism and “Build-Our-Way-Out-of-Crisis” Mentality

NEOM’s vision is based on a bigger idea: that if technology and architectural ambitions are big enough, they can build new things that will solve the world’s problems, like climate change, overpopulation, and economic stagnation. But this way of thinking about “building our way out of crisis” is misguided, at best, or just flat out wrong, at worst. It doesn’t address underlying problems, like patterns of consumption, unequal access to resources, unsustainable growth, and ecological limits. In this way, it maintains the idea that more infrastructure, growth, and technological solutions are all signs of success.

Critics on social media sites like r/collapse have said that these huge megaprojects feed into the neoliberal belief in money, show, and endless growth. Someone wrote, “Neom completely denies the reality that we shouldn’t be building huge new settlements in the desert with money from oil and blood.”  Someone else was even harsher: they called The Line “an abomination formula for a catastrophic social system.” In other words, there is no proof that it will work as an efficient, humane, or sustainable city.6

These feelings cast a larger doubt about speculative architecture: that it might make problems worse by making inequality, environmental damage, social isolation, and irresponsible resource usage worse.  We could make the same mistakes repeatedly on a much bigger and worse scale if we don’t question the idea that “new megacities” are the answer.

What NEOM Could (Should) Have Been — and Why It Won’t

To give NEOM a fair review, one must ask: Is there a way that this project could have really led to a sustainable, fair, and environmentally friendly urban future? In general, yes. In theory, a sustainable city built in a desert could use passive architecture, rely on renewable energy, protect existing ecosystems, build at the human scale, bring together traditional communities, and grow slowly. But NEOM doesn’t do many of those things. Instead, it focuses on tall structures, dramatic changes to the landscape, quick, creative builds, top-down control, and displacement.

But NEOM’s constitution — paid for by oil-rich states, run by offshore consultants, dependent on migrant workers, and sold with flashy CGI and high-tech promises — makes involvement with indigenous communities, modular growth, humane working conditions, and accurate environmental reporting less likely. Speed, spectacle, and image are more important than care, context, and natural justice in NEOM’s political economy. NEOM could have been a risky experiment in sustainable desert urbanism, but instead it is changing the environment to fit a certain image, erasing communities and ecosystems, and building a fortress of luxury on the backs of people who can’t be seen.

Counterarguments and Response

There’s a legitimate argument that proponents might say, “Yes, NEOM is ambitious, but we need ambition to deal with climate change and urban crises; old cities don’t work; fossil-fuel economies need to diversify; this is a long-term investment; new technologies can lead to long-term solutions; the region needs jobs, infrastructure, and a vision for the future.”

 These points should be taken seriously. But desire does not ensure results. As discussed, the real damage that NEOM does to the environment and to people’s lives is apparent. The carbon debt that was built up may be higher than the potential long-term environmental benefits. Systemic crimes like displacement, labor abuse, and authoritarian control cannot be fixed by solar panels or hydrogen plants.

The idea that “bigger is better”—that building megacities will solve our environmental and urban problems as old models have failed to work—is a deeply flawed modernity that is preoccupied with growth. It doesn’t consider ecological limits, social diversity, or the worth of small-scale, contextually rich, community-based urbanism. Instead of seeing NEOM as a step forward, we should see it as a warning: a symbol of arrogance, a risk to society and the environment, and a project with deep negative effects on people and the world.

The Mirage Must Be Exposed

The image of NEOM’s mirrored buildings, luxury resorts, floating industrial zones, and vertical cities is beautiful, but it hides more than it shows. Its promises of sustainability aren’t backed by evidence, and its design is more of a monument than a home. It has a huge social cost and could have a catastrophic environmental cost. NEOM wants to change the story of modernity by calling itself “the city of the future” and showing Saudi Arabia as a center of progress, innovation, clean energy, and global importance. But the integrity of the environment, social justice, and moral duty are all hurt by this rewriting.        
NEOM’s “sustainability” is a dream, and we shouldn’t take it as real progress.

Creating long-lasting cities that don’t depend on showy buildings or megastructures, but on humility, ecology, community, diversity, resilience, and long-term care is the real task at hand. As NEOM demonstrates to us, the future won’t come with mirror towers and highways made of drones in the sky — not if we want it to be fair, humane, and long-lasting.


  1. Bryan, Kenza. “Neom Climate Adviser Warns Futuristic City Could Alter Weather Patterns.” Financial Times, May 4, 2025. 
  2. Ahdad, Doriane, Divine Foucault, Alexine Prentignac, and Rodolphe Desbordes. 2024. “Greenwashing or revolution, what is NEOM all about?” SKEMA Knowledge. September 25, 2024. https://knowledge.skema.edu/saudi-arabia-what-is-neom-project/#:~:text=Not%20to%20mention%20that%20the%20construction%20of,construction%20alone%20would%20have%20enormous%20environmental%20consequences.
  3. “Neom Halts $1.5 Billion Desalination Facility Project.” Smart Water Magazine, May 21, 2024. https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/smart-water-magazine/neom-halts-15-billion-desalination-facility-project.
  4. Morgan, Ewan. “Al-Huwaitat Tribe Seeks UN Help to Stop Saudi Forced Displacement.” Al Jazeera. Accessed December 23, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/9/al-huwaitat-tribe-seeks-un-help-to-stop-saudi-forced-displacement.
  5. Roche, Daniel Jonas. “New documentary reveals that 21,000 laborers have died working on Saudi Vision 2030, which includes NEOM, since construction began.” The Architect’s Newspaper, October 29, 2024. https://www.archpaper.com/2024/10/documentary-reveals-21000-workers-killed-saudi-vision-2030-neom/
  6. Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/wag6qe/neom_and_the_fallacy_of_building_our_way_out_of/