Saudi Arabia is planning to build an entire city along a single line 100 miles long and just 200m wide.

Named ‘the Line,’ Saudi officials say the project is ‘the city of the future’: a car-free metropolis that will run on 100% renewable energy and offer its residents clean air in an ever more polluted world.

It’s designed to host businesses as well as housing inside numerous vertically-stacked neighbourhoods, with residents facing a maximum commute of 20 minutes from one end of the city to the other.

The Line – due to be just 200 metres wide – will make Neom world’s most livable city ‘by far’, officials claim

A futuristic Saudi megacity is to feature two skyscrapers extending across a swathe of desert and mountain terrain, according to the latest disclosures on the project by the kingdom’s de facto ruler.

The parallel structures of mirror-encased skyscrapers extending more than 100 miles, known collectively as the Line, form the heart of the Red Sea megacity Neom, a plank of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to diversify the Gulf state’s oil-dependent economy.

Saudia Arabia’s press agency released a clip of the latest designs for the city on Monday. They show a sleek, futuristic and surprisingly green utopia, with a rooftop garden and ‘equitable views’ from any point.

Officials say the design would also benefit the natural world, using a minimal amount of land. It also places residents close to dramatic desert landscapes, rock formations and the ocean.

The city is part of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious ‘Neom’ project: a ‘sustainable regional development’ spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In recent years, he has been trying to change perceptions of a country that, from 1957 until 2018, did not allow women to drive.

Now it’s a vehicle for reimagining urban life on a footprint of just 13 sq miles (34 sq km), addressing what Prince Mohammed describes as “liveability and environmental crises”.

“The concept has morphed so much from its early conception that it’s sometimes hard to determine its direction: scaling down, scaling up, or making an aggressive turn sideways,” said Robert Mogielnicki of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Officials had earlier said Neom’s population would top 1 million, but Prince Mohammed said the number would actually hit 1.2 million by 2030, before climbing to 9 million by 2045.