“Madinat al-Hareer, or City of Silk is a colossal development-in-planning with an expanse of 250 sq km, roughly the same size as Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. Taking its name from the historic Silk Road, a route which connected Europe and China via the Middle East, the project will echo this sentiment creating a rail network linking Kuwait to Damascus, Baghdad, Iran and China, it has been announced. The project aims to act as a passageway from Kuwait to Israel and increase links between the two countries.
This week also saw the announcement that funding for City of Silk has been increased from £43 billion to £66 billion. The Kuwait Government have set up a special authority to handle the development, the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies presided over by Sami Alfaraj. He told Reuters:
“We are not dreamers at all when we talk about investing $132bn, (£66billion).
“We’re thinking on a different plane, because we cannot afford to think like everyone else. We’re thinking about something that might seem unimaginable…We’re going to outmanoeuvre everybody who is going to remain in the old mode of thinking about economic prospects.””
(Source: World Architecture News)