Why Saudi Arabia Is Building a Linear City

I do not believe this wil work for several reasons

the first is that such projects, cities where people wil be able to settle has been done before, and it has generally been accepted to have failed, people generally prefere to stay where they have their roots and those who do leave do so for various push and pull factors that must be present

the idea that people wil not need personal cars is not farfetched looking at large cities around the world, but you only need to drive around for a bit to see that people love the freedom to choose where to go and what to do, just go to a do it yourself shop and see how many cars drive up and down to pick up their stuff and that is just one of many reasons

thirdly, a layered city concept is so old that it was in my high school textbooks, everybody loves it
buuuuut, think about it, just think about it, is it really worth the effort, and let's say that it gets built
boom something goes wrong, a gassline explodes or a truck hits a vital structure or so on, and now you need to repair it
what's more,  those super technological trains and other high tech bits are going to break at one point sooner rather than later, and it wil be a constant struggle to keep things running at all 

I may be wrong in the end, but I just don't buy it, 
I do think they wil manage to diversify their economy, but even so when the oil dries up or demand falls enough 
no amount of investments wil be able to maintain the position arabian countries hold today when the oil does crash, because that position is not just due to the wealth they gain from it but also the influence this key resource offers, agriculture, tech industry, culture, .... it can be done in most countries and often more effectively, they could make taxes really low as some of their neighbours are doing to attract foreign investments but in the end that in itsself only works as long as being a tax paradise is a uniqum, and all of the oil domminated countries are thinking the same thing, agriculture is working, but groundwater wil run out even before oil would, and they are allready pumping for dear life

they could go the way of Israel and build desalinisation plants, but that would be expensive water compared to more temperate climate countries