This would be a tremendous amount of steel for the size of building they are creating.<p>Crude steel production in 2023: 18.88 billion mt. 20% = 3,776,000,000 metric tons.<p>If you just laid that on the ground in 1 meter square blocks it would cover a 481km² area (steel mass=7850 kg/m³). If you made a 1m² block tower, it would be enough to reach the moon, wrap around it, and start heading back.<p>Their original planned area is 26,500 square km, though this has been scaled back to 1.5km long.<p>I struggle to see how 481,019 m³ of steel will fit in an area 1.5km square without being the largest and tallest building ever constructed. If you just made a block of pure steel in that 1.5km square area it's going to be 320m high (about half the height of the world trade center across an area the size of 40 Manhatten blocks).
> <i>"The Neom giga-project in Saudi Arabia is currently using one fifth of all the steel produced in the world, an official said on Monday."</i><p>So nearly 400 million metric tons. (Over a year -- and Neom's construction is a multi-year project.)<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...</a><p>That's more than India, the US, Japan, and Germany produce -- combined.<p>This seems wildly implausible. The World Trade Center famously utilized 200,000 tons of steel -- 0.05% of what Neom claims to be using. (Annually, or however they reckon it.)<p>I think "an official said" is doing quite a lot of work in that opening statement.
I suppose it will never be built, but it says the planned area is 26,500 km2 (10,200 sq mi). Have they said the expected/desired population? Riyadh is by far their biggest city with 7M people on less than 2,000 km2.<p>Where would these people come from? I'm sure they can bribe some people to move there, but how many?
I think not.<p>They probably mean the planned project would use one fifth of the world's steel but it is currently just a hole in the ground and the project is kind of ridiculous and won't get built as planned - even the Saudis don't have enough money.<p>Patrick Boyle had an entertaining youtube on it <a href="https://youtu.be/Ak4on5uTaTg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Ak4on5uTaTg</a>
Shocking and depressing how easily they've been able to find overcharging consultancy firms and willing spruikers ready to hype up what is obviously a stupid and unrealistic vanity project.<p>At 1% of it's planned length, it's already going to be nothing like the shiny CGI videos. And the Howeitat had to be removed or jailed to build even that. Shameful.
How is transport handled? Even with a high capacity subway with stops every mile you could still be 1/2 mile from your destination. Also if a train stops everywhere even if only on demand it will still take forever to get from one end to the other. Maybe a fleet of robotaxis.
Steel production causes around 8% of the worlds CO2 emissions, so if this is right, this project alone is causing emissions around two thirds of all of the worlds aviation.