10.17192/meta.2019.12.7937 Aly, Hend Hend Aly Royal Dream: City Branding and Saudi Arabia’s NEOM Middle East - Topics + Arguments : Vol 12 (2019) Philipps-Universität Marburg 2019 Saudi Arabia Corporatization Creative New City Urban Development NEOM Branding Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) 2019-07-03 2019-06-25 en JournalArticle https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0003/2019/230/7937 urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0003-2019-230-79377 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0003/2019/230/7937/7937.png 2196-629X application/pdf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 In 2017, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia announced the new mega-city NEOM. The city is envisioned to be a “start-up the size of a country”, and it aims at attracting the “best talents”, offering them “technology with livability at its core.” The paper foregrounds city branding to understand what NEOM is all about: its imagined society and proposed governance. It further explores how city branding strategies position NEOM and the Kingdom regionally and globally and reaffirm the Crown Prince’s power. It also questions the conceptual nature of the branded object itself, as branding documents show that NEOM alternates between being a city, a start-up, a country, and the Crown Prince’s legacy. 2196-629X Middle East - Topics + Arguments Vol 12 (2019)