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Now imagine a city that doesn't sprawl outwards. It shoots straight, a razor sharp line slicing through the desert. Just towers of mirrored glass rising higher than the clouds. Housing people inside. In what is essentially one impossibly long building. Sounds unreal. Almost like science fiction. Except this was supposed to be reality. Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman didn't just dream big. He dreamed cinematically. And for a few years the world watched. Unsure whether to be dazzled or to be deeply sceptical. Today we have an answer. And it's complicated. In 2016, Mohammed bin Salman or MBS as the world likes to call him, unveiled Vision 2030. The pitch was audacious. Take a kingdom swimming in oil money and use it to build a future without oil. Spend nearly a trillion dollars from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which is a giant national investment fund owned by the government, to construct cities of tomorrow. Attract foreign investment, create jobs and put Saudi Arabia on the global map. Not just as an oil state. Fast forward to today, four years away from 2030. And that dream is being quietly dismantled. I'll get to the reasons later. But first let me tell you about the flagship of this ambition. A 500 billion dollar mega project. It's called Neom. And inside it, smaller projects. Like the line, Trojena, the cube. Each one more spectacular than the last. Each one more expensive than ordinary imagination. The most famous project under the Neom project is the line. Picture this. You draw a line and stretch it into a straight line across the Saudi desert in the Tabuk province. Now make it taller than the Eiffel Tower. Bordered by 500 meter high walls and 170 kilometers long. That's the distance from London to Birmingham. That's the distance from Mumbai to Pune. And 9 million people were meant to live inside it. It was supposed to have no cars, no streets, no sprawl. Just two parallel towers of glass and steel. Visually it was unlike anything ever proposed in human history. The engineering challenges alone were staggering. And the question nobody could quite answer was. Why would anyone want to live inside a 170 kilometer corridor? Today reports suggest the project may be scaled back. To just a few kilometers of actual construction. Regarding the Neom project system. Given Neom's importance, as I mentioned earlier, it is a major global economic zone. Now, has there been any acceleration or cancellation? This question has been repeated a lot. I can answer now and say no project in Neom has been cancelled. Has anything been postponed? Certainly, yes. Why? Some projects have been delayed because they are not on the critical path. There is no critical impact. Then comes Rojina. In Saudi Arabia's Hijaz mountains. It actually snows there occasionally. The Saudis saw an opportunity. What if we built a year-round mountain ski resort here? Slopes, chalets, a man-made lake, luxury hotels. A St. Moritz in Arabia. It was even set to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029. Which would have been a genuinely remarkable moment. A ski competition in Saudi Arabia. The world would have taken notice. Instead, the games have been quietly handed to Kazakhstan. Rojina still exists on paper but the ambition has been clipped. Then there's the cube that I mentioned. Or what's locally called the Mukhab. This was supposed to be a gigantic cube-shaped building planned for Riyadh. So vast it could contain the Empire State Building not once, not twice, but 20 times over. A city block reimagined as a single vertical object. Housing offices, apartments and amenities on a scale never attempted. Price tag? An estimated 50 billion dollars. Its fate? Cancelled entirely. And finally there's Live Golf. Saudi Arabia spent around 5 billion dollars to create a rival golf tour to the PGA. It's the biggest and most prestigious golf competition system in the world. The kingdom tried to poach the world's biggest names in the game. Hosting glitzy tournaments, trying to buy its way into the mainstream. The strategy was familiar. Sports as soft power. But Live never quite landed. Experts believe the hugely expensive dud brought neither a financial nor a reputational return for the country. The project's main backer, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, is set to pull its funding entirely after the 2026 season. So what happened? Why were all of these ambitious projects either scaled back or cancelled entirely? First is the matter of money. Oil prices crashed before the West Asia conflict flared up. And even Saudi Arabia's extraordinary wealth isn't infinite. Foreign investment, the lifeblood of these projects desperately needed, never showed up in the volumes Crown Prince MBS had bet on. When you're asking private investors to fund a 500 billion dollar city in the desert with no existing population, no transport links and no proven demand, it turns out they do hesitate. In 2017, the Crown Prince also ordered the mass detention of elite officials and businessmen in Riyadh's Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Saudi government said it was a crackdown on corruption. Critics called it a shakedown. Foreign investors typically steer clear of countries where rules feel less stable and unpredictable. On top of all of this, there's the Iran war. The conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran sent shockwaves through the entire Gulf region. Tourism strategies, commercial ambitions, the UAE's model of being the world's hub, all of it is now clouded in uncertainty. And Saudi Arabia did not just try to copy that model, it wanted to beat it. Finally, there's the oldest problem in the book. When grand visions collide with reality, Saudi's Economic Cities program was launched in mid-2000s. It was an attempt to diversify the economy, but the project largely flopped. The crown jewel of that program, King Abdullah Economic City on the Red Sea coast north of Jeddah, cost 100 billion dollars. It exists today, but the goal of it is becoming a business and tourism hub hasn't materialized. But calling this a collapse would be too simplistic. Some projects which are less sci-fi in nature are quietly succeeding. Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia's ancient archeological gem in the north, is being developed into a genuine world-class cultural destination. The remodeling and revival of the old capital, Biriyah, in Riyadh is also underway. And so is the massive state-of-the-art theme park, Six Flags Libya City. So is this a recalibration? Or is this a retreat? It's probably both. India's bit of more than any country could chew, spent billions on spectacle that generated headlines, but hardly any returns. And now faces the unglamorous task of managing expectations. The world moves fast. Power shifts. Unexpected developments. Changing alliances. Every day brings a new headline. But headlines are only the beginning. Because behind every story, there is context. There are consequences. And there are questions worth asking. Find the answers. Understand the story. Take on the world. This is Himkour Saroya for First Post Vantage.