minent journalist Miguel Ángel Bastenier often repeated this phrase. What, then, would the construction of an entire world be like? In the East, where civilizations have always been particularly enlightened, progress is being made on the —assuredly— biggest economic transfor-mation project undertaken by a single nation to date. The area of Al-UIa connects the old world to the new. It was a key center of trade at the crossroads of the Silk Road and the Incense Route, and with legacies like Hegra, it well deserves its World Heritage Status. Its dry riverbed is now resuscitating; it’s turning green. Home to inval-uable, millennia-old petroglyphs in Nabatean or Aramaic, it’s also the site of Maraya Concert Hall, the world’s largest mirrored building. Trams, bicycles and electric buggies make their way around. Rewilding is being planned and the entire complex could be carbon-neutral by 2035. And yet, it’s dwarfed by the scale of The Line, a smart city that aims to be home to one million local and foreign residents distributed into self-suf-