A consultant who worked on Saudi Arabia's NEOM megaproject says its centerpiece called THE LINE will be more of a resort than a functioning city. Chris Hables Gray, an author and consultant who researched science fiction design aesthetics for THE LINE in 2021, told Business Insider that the futuristic city was a "resort for 0.01% of the population."

Although Saudi Arabia has "large amounts of money to spend, there is no chance that it is a real city," he said. Gray said NEOM's promotional videos of THE LINE were meant to be "seductive" and showed "amazingly enticing visions of a future that will never be."

The project is expected to house 300,000 people by 2030, according to a Bloomberg report earlier this year, a downgrade from a previous target of 1.5 million residents. The NEOM project also includes several luxury tourist destinations along the Gulf of Aqaba in a bid to compete with nearby Dubai.

Read the full story at MSN