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 idea, however, seems to have been unrealistic from the start. 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. Moreover, did big ego, including the architects', get in the way ("lack of ego-control")? That is, design should be driven by best-practices, rather than ego.