This seems like a rather weak takedown, but I'd be interested in reading a more thorough one if someone knowledgeable has written one anywhere.<p>In particular, I feel like building the city out in one direction, seems like it's a pretty good idea in terms of "factory made" construction, you're just repeating the same tasks, so specialist workers and tools like cranes just move onto the next segment when done.<p>Building something the height of the twin towers is hard, but building something the height of the twin towers, directly next to something that already exists and has elevators in it, that is the height of the twin towers with easy access on three sides seems a lot more doable.<p>I totally agree with the anti-royalty, totalitarian dictator stuff, so don't want to detract from that, but building sustainable cities in your country seems a reasonable use for the money in the abstract. And an oil-rich nation building a car free city, with 100% renewable power seems like a good sign generally.<p>There seems to have been a few 'wild' construction projects in the general area, would be interesting to see an expert take on if those seemed to make more or less sense once complete, and what percentage of them did get completed, and how sustainable they are in the long term, are they basically burning money unsustainable and what's the human and environmental cost of building them (deaths of workers etc.).<p>I think they also have a few other 'sustainable cities' that have been around for a while, which provide another good benchmark, if they're basically building ever larger prototypes.<p>This is the existing one I was thinking of, Masdar City in UAE:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City</a>