Bloomberg, June 1: The Middle East is already home to the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Long before the rise of Prince Mohammed, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal had announced plans to build the world’s tallest building near Jeddah. The skyscraper remains only partially completed.

Some of Saudi Arabia’s financial windfall from higher oil prices is likely to end up going toward building Neom. Government officials have said one beneficiary of surplus funds could be the powerful Public Investment Fund, which is chaired by Prince Mohammed and the owner of Neom.

Yet funding has not been Neom’s challenge so far. Instead, questions have been raised about the project’s feasibility after several other giant developments intended to bolster economic diversification in the past failed to take off. The PIF, as the wealth fund is known, is trying to turn a mostly finished office cluster in northern Riyadh that cost billions to build and was commissioned under a previous ruler into a financial center.

In the hope of avoiding a similar fate, The Line will be built in stages based on demand, people involved in the project said.

“When people talk about The Line, they see a futuristic Hyperloop, Star Wars type of entity,” said Ali Shihabi, a member of Neom’s advisory board. “But when The Line was presented to the board, I saw a highly intelligent, well thought-out sustainable modern city that will accommodate from laborers to billionaires and that will be built in stages, so it will follow demand.”-Agencies