The Massive Master Plan

Businesses, homegrown and foreign alike, also face several problems that are unique to Saudi Arabia. The quality of the local workforce is poor, owing to an education system that has long placed religious studies above science and math (unlike that of the élites, who are often Western-educated). Reforms are under way, but it will be years before Saudi universities are churning out world-class engineers in the numbers the country needs. Nor can businesses expect to simply import employees, which has long been the norm in the Persian Gulf economies: mindful of that youth bulge, Riyadh is imposing a "Saudi-ization" program that requires businesses to hire more locals. It doesn't help that employers don't have access to half the potential workforce: despite some recent gains for women, only small numbers of them have overcome the stiff cultural resistance to females going to work.

Al-Dabbagh is certain these hurdles won't stand in the way of investors in the new cities. They will, he says, be "new pockets of competitiveness," like economic greenhouses for businesses. In the desert, that's the only way to make things grow.