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By 2030, the government at one point hoped to have 1.5 million residents living in The Line, a sprawling, futuristic city it plans to contain within a pair of mirror-clad skyscrapers. Now, officials expect the development will house fewer than 300,000 residents by that time, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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Officials have long said The Line would be built in stages and they expect it to ultimately cover a 170-kilometer stretch of desert along the coast. With the latest pullback, though, officials expect to have just 2.4 kilometers of the project completed by 2030, the person familiar with the matter said, who asked not to be named discussing non-public information.
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Along with The Line, Neom's plans include an industrial city, ports, and tourism developments. It's also set to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029 at a mountain resort called Trojena.

To be sure, work is continuing on other parts of the broader Neom project and officials have maintained their overall objectives for The Line, people familiar with the matter said. For instance, another development within Neom that is turning an island in the Red Sea into a luxury tourist destination known as Sindalah is due to open this year.

The pullback on The Line comes as the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund has yet to approve Neom's budget for 2024, the people familiar with the matter said. It shows that the financial realities of the trillions of dollars of investment are starting to cause concern at the highest levels of the Saudi government as it tries to fulfill its ambitious Vision 2030 program, the overarching initiative tasked with diversifying the kingdom's economy.
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Not everyone, however, has been convinced by the prince's glossy prospectus. Writing in the New York Times in 2021 at the time Neom released a video describing the prospects of living between the city's silvered walls, the US journalist and author Robert Worth said: "To watch the crown prince's promotional video is to be immersed in a distinctively Saudi form of arrogance, blending religious triumphalism, and royal grandiosity."

And hubris, too, apparently.