01 Feb Saudi Arabia Plans to Make a Smart City with Artificial Moon
Saudi Arabia is intended to form a smart city complete with extreme technology including an artificial moon, robot dinosaurs, flying cars, human gene editing and glow-in-the-dark sand among many other things.
The plans have been shared via some private documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, as the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) plans to form a futuristic $500billoion mega-city. The plans are referred to as the Neom project, for lessening the Kingdom’s dependence on oil and because the city is intended to be called Neom.
The word Neom is a combination of Greek word Neos which means new and the Arabic word Mustaqbil which means future. The suggested features mentioned in the reports include a huge artificial moon, flying taxis and cloud seeding technology for producing artificial clouds and more rainfall in the desert of Saudi Arabia.
The plans also detail how the city will have schools with classes taught by holographic teachers, homes with robotic maids to complete the housework, glow-in-the-dark sand, a Jurassic park-like island featuring robotic dinosaurs for entertainment and also an ultra-modern security system that would make use of drones, security cameras and facial recognition for tracking each citizen throughout the day.
Nadhmi al Nasr, the Chief Executive of Neom, has previously stated how Neom is all about things that related to future and are visionary. He added that they are talking about cutting edge technology and beyond, and in some of the cases is still in the development and maybe theoretical stages. Neom is among the MBS’s Vision of 2030 to modernise and diversify the country’s economy by cutting down its dependence on fossil fuels.