Real-Time Is Too Late: NEOM’s Digital Air and the Pre-emptive Synthetic City

Ghassemi, Mehdi and David Murakami Wood

David Murakami Wood

David Murakami Wood is Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance and Security Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa, and Director of CSS/Lab in the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. His current research focuses on the elite construction of special zones, new cities and urban enclaves in an era of planetary emergency, and the relationship of security, surveillance and the polycrisis.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 11September 7, 2026<September 9, 2026

Real-Time Is Too Late: NEOM’s Digital Air and the Pre-emptive Synthetic City

Mehdi Ghassemi and David Murakami Wood

NEOM promised a city with its own "digital air". Mehdi Ghassemi and David Murakami Wood read the cognitive-city's promotional artefacts to show how atmosphere, consent and the digital twin were settled before any resident arrived, and what persists now the that brand has receded.