From ‘The Line’ To Mars Colonies, How The Richest Are Building Cities Of Tomorrow That Will Cost Trillions

• Saudi Crown Prince’s “The Line” project is estimated to cost $1 trillion USD. 
• Marc Lore’s sustainable city “Telosa” has a $400 billion USD price tag. 
• Elon Musk’s Mars colonisation aims to make humanity a multi-planetary species. 

When you have more money than you know what to do with, what’s the next step? Luxury cars? Private islands? Maybe even a superyacht? Sure, those are nice, but for the world’s richest visionaries, the ultimate flex isn’t a rare watch or a large property — it’s an entire city. And not just any city, but futuristic, self-sustaining metropolises that are designed to redefine how we live, work, and in some cases, survive beyond Earth.

These visionary projects aren’t cheap and will require hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars to be executed. But that’s exactly what makes them the epitome of wealth and power. And when you’re Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or among the world’s richest people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Marc Lore, financial problems hardly stand in your way. Instead, the main challenges become technical feasibility and timeline.

These projects are ambitious and mind-bending plans meant to push the boundaries of architecture, sustainability, and even civilisation itself, but they are not that easy to accomplish.

Mohammed bin Salman’s “The Line”

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced The Line in 2021, the world did a double take. It’s a 170-kilometre-long city that stretches across northwest Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Province and has mirrored skyscrapers towering 500 meters into the sky with no cars, no emissions, and everything residents need within a five-minute walk. It sounds like something straight out of a cyberpunk novel. And yet, the project is very real—at least in concept.

The Line is being designed as part of Saudi Arabia’s NEOM megaproject and is expected to house 9 million residents. It promises a revolution in urban living, with an underground infrastructure for utilities and high-speed transportation which ensures seamless travel and the entire city is meant to run on renewable energy while preserving 95% of its surrounding nature.

AI will optimise everything from waste management to public services, making this one of the most technologically advanced cities ever attempted. The project is expected to create over 460,000 jobs and contribute significantly to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan, which aims to diversify the kingdom’s economy beyond oil. 

However, with an estimated price tag of $1 trillion USD, even Saudi Arabia’s deep pockets will be tested. While construction is underway, questions remain — can such an ambitious project truly be completed on time? And more importantly, will people actually want to live there?

Marc Lore’s Telosa Project 

Billionaire entrepreneur Marc Lore who is the former Walmart executive and founder of Jet.com, has his own utopian vision: Telosa. Unlike The Line’s futuristic glass and steel aesthetic, Telosa is designed to be a model of sustainability, social equity, and self-sufficiency. Think organic skyscrapers, green spaces, and a citywide commitment to renewable energy.

The project is expected to cost at least $400 billion USD and will be spread across 150,000 acres (about the size of Chicago), where cars are autonomous, water is endlessly recycled, and urban congestion is a thing of the past. It is being designed by star architect Bjarke Ingels and is planned to house 30,000 residents by 2030, with a vision of growing to 5 million people by 2070.

Telosa will also include 36 mixed-use districts where residents can access necessities within a 15-minute walk. Possible locations for the project include deserts in Nevada, Utah, Arizona or areas in the Appalachian region—though securing enough land won’t be easy.

Lore’s vision is to tackle challenges related to rapid urbanisation, climate change, and inequality through this project. But as noble as that sounds, actually turning such an idea into reality will require more than just money — it’ll need people who are willing to take a leap of faith into an experimental way of life.

Musk’s Mars Colonisation and City Building 

While some billionaires are focused on making new cities on Earth, Elon Musk is thinking much, much bigger — like an entire civilisation on Mars. His company, SpaceX, has been working toward making humanity a multi-planetary species, and Musk has repeatedly said that colonising Mars is essential for our survival.

His vision is simple in theory, but the reality is far from it. The plan is to launch thousands of Starships to transport humans and cargo to the Red Planet, and eventually establish a self-sustaining city that can support life with resources like water, oxygen, and food produced on Mars itself, which will likely involve large-scale terraforming techniques. No one really knows how much it would cost, but estimates run into hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.

Musk has thrown out the idea of a first mission happening as early as the 2020s and believes this is important not just for exploration, but also as a backup plan for humanity in case of existential threats like climate change, asteroid impacts, or global conflicts.

The biggest challenge? Well, pretty much everything. How do you reliably produce water and oxygen on Mars? How do you grow enough food? The logistics are very complicated. And let’s not even get started on the psychological toll of living on a barren, frozen planet 225 million kilometres away from home.

All of these projects sound very innovative (or, in Musk’s case, out-of-this-world) but history has seen a lot of ambitious ideas that never made it past the blueprint stage. Regardless, if even a fraction of these visions are successfully brought to life then they could redefine urban development, sustainability, and human expansion in ways we can’t yet imagine.