When ideas run into the sand

When Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman proposed building a 110-mile linear megacity called the Line in the middle of the desert near the border of Jordan and Egypt in 2020—the centerpiece of a vast new planned city called Neom accommodating 9 million residents—a dozen of the world’s most prestigious architecture firms signed up. Now, five years later, the idea has run into the sand, literally, with the Saudi government having a change of heart announcing the $1.5 trillion project will be downscaled drastically. And so, the assigned architects are now working on redesigning the megastructure into a more modest, and radically changed project - from metropolis to a hub for data centers to serve the AI industry. The megacity idea, however, was, due to is complexity and construction costs, unrealistic from the start. More generally, expert analysis by Oxford University's Saïd Business School suggests megaprojects are often commissioned for the wrong reason ("unchecked  motivations") and, due to their size and complexity, are pre-determined to systemic failure. As for motivation, then, did big ego, including the architects', get in the way ("lack of ego-control")? If so, does the retreat of the megaproject exemplify design driven by hype rather than evidence-based practice. For example, Neom's presentation videos were a masterclass in rendering a seductive utopia. More contentious, the Saudi decision may reflect how the planning of Arab cities responds to globalism: That is, does "new Arab urbanism" differ significantly from colonialism, that is, the intrusion of a Western lifestyle? http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/20950/1/11.pdf