Name: New Murabba: Reimagining Urban Living
Uploaded: 2025-10-28
Duration: 10 min 28 s

New Murabba is one of the world’s most ambitious urban experiments: a district built entirely around the 15-minute city ideal, where homes, workspaces, parks, schools, health care, culture, and entertainment all are within walking distance. At its heart stands The Mukaab, a colossal cubic landmark designed to host immersive cultural, retail, and entertainment experiences—a structure so massive it could enclose 20 Empire State Buildings. We'll learn how New Murabba could reshape Riyadh’s economy and culture and set a new benchmark for sustainable city living with vast green spaces and smart, low-carbon design. 

New Murabba: Reimagining Urban Living

Conferences

Salamalaikam, um, good afternoon, everyone. Um, Your Highnesses, Excellencies, colleagues, friends, thank you for indulging me for the next, um, 10 minutes today, uh, to take you on a journey into Naraba. So Luaraba is more than just an abstract plan. It's actually very much designed to be the future of urban living here in Riyadh. And when we think about what we're doing right now, it's very tangible, very real. 150 million cubic meters of rock have been pulled from the ground. Over 1100 deep bar foundations have been placed to hold the largest structure on the planet. The enabling works are progressing very well in terms of clearing the estate, and we have our master plan approved, which is a massive step forward in the last two months, which means that it's tangible, it's real, and it's now. And of that master plan, 70% is now at the stage where the zones have been planned with the remaining 30% coming in the next few months. So we are good to go. When we think about what Narava is and what the downtown is, just to put some perspective, we have 14 square kilometers northwest corner of Riyadh, prime real estate, and if we compare that to other downtowns in the world, if you take the downtown of Manhattan. The downtown of London, the downtown of Paris, bring them together, and that is essentially the size of Naraba, and that's going to be here in Riyadh, which we're very excited about. And when we start to consider what does that really mean, well, Riyadh is already an amazing city, an amazing capital city, and what you'll find with Naraba is we're not referring to ourselves as a city. We refer to ourselves as extending an already great capital city to make it even greater in the future. And if we think about what does downtown look and feel like, if you imagine when you visit New York, there are 25,000 people per square kilometer in downtown Manhattan. If you go to London, it's about 22,000, Paris is 20,000. Nura will be about 22,000, so that's the kind of density we'll be creating, and we'll be introducing new to Riyadh almost 1900 structures which will be introducing mid and high level living to the kingdom, which means that all those things that Saudis visit and experience when they travel the world, they'll be able to have here in Riyadh. And when we understand what is the purpose of Nummeaba, it's to create the world's largest modern downtown, but it's so much more than just creating a place or buildings. It's about driving economic transformation linked to vision 2030. And essentially we will be pushing the boundaries of tourism where we expect, particularly with the macabre that sits at the heart of our core downtown, almost 100 million visitations per annum alone just to macabre. The real estate, we have an enormous level of real estate. We have 17 million square meters of gross letable area in terms of real estate across all of the asset classes that you would expect in terms of residential, hospitality, and also retail. And retail we have about 1.4 million square meters of retail. We have the same volume of retail that Dubai Mall has just underneath the macabre as a flavor. And we also are a downtown for the future. I think we provide a very strong bridge between the heritage of Riyadh and the kingdom of yesterday through today and projecting into the future, which means that entrepreneurs will be a key part of life at Nuraba. And finally, digital infrastructure. Numerava essentially is the place where physical and digital converge at a grand scale, and when we think about many of the things we've heard this morning, particularly around the advent of AI, this is the ability to project that onto a human scale everywhere all at once. And we are accelerating Saudi Arabia's economic shift. By the time we go live in the 2030s right the way through to 2045, we will be generating tens of billions of stimulus into the economy. There will be over 300,000 people living in Nimaba. There will be several hundreds of thousands of people working in Nimaba in the next 5 to 10 years and beyond in terms of servicing. Effectively the world's largest modern downtown. And amongst all of that at the heart is the mocabre. It is the beating heart of Nimuraba. This is A structure like nothing else on the planet. Um, if we think about scale, we're talking 400 m by 400 m by 400 m. To give you an idea of that scale, you could take 20 Empire State Buildings and put them inside the cube. That's to give a flavor of the scale that we're talking about here. And the cube is just the center of that, and above and beyond it, we have the macabre district, which wraps around and underneath. And when we start to unpack what's inside the cube, essentially we have a cube, we have a dome, and we have a tower. The tower is the only skyscraper in the world that lives inside another building. The dome protects the tower and creates the atmosphere inside. And the dome also transports the load from the world's largest roof at height at 150,000 square meters, and it transports it through four corner towers down to the ground into those deep power foundations I mentioned earlier. And inside the dome is what we describe as another world. It's an opportunity for people to be transported from the world that they know today. Into journeys and places that they may never thought were possible, but to do it from Riyadh, grounded in Riyadh, but transported to another world. We do that through technology and we wrap the entire dome with immersive technology which is pushing the boundaries of what's possible today. And what that means is if we take a scale and a size equivalent, we think about MSG sphere in Las Vegas, the immersive display inside Riyadh's Numura and macabre is 23 times the size. Of the sphere in Las Vegas to give you an idea of the scale of what we're talking about, both in terms of height and distance, and at any point in time, 50,000 people can physically spend their time on the central tower, whether it's at the lower spiral experiencing retail that's never been seen before, or whether it's food and beverage or dining or otherwise even staying in one of the 450 keys at the upper parts of the tower. And when all of that is put together, if we take what is on the roof, what is in the corner towers, what is inside the dome, and what is underneath, the macabre at peak can can hold 250,000 people. That's a quarter of a million people at any point in time. Um, but when we step back from that, ultimately Nimaraba is really anchored around the 15 minute city phenomenon. And what that means is that people who live, work and play in Nimaraba can get everything they want in their everyday lives by walking just 15 minutes. Um, in fact, they can get. 90% of what they want by walking in 5 minutes. So we actually have 14 communities that wrap around the macabre, the largest community just to the north is about 23,000 people. That's about 8000 homes, and everything you would expect in terms of schools for your children, in terms of Medicare, in terms of nighttime economy, everything you can imagine is there for you in each one of those communities. And the thing that we're particularly proud about is actually living true to the the vision of His Royal Highness, um, in terms of emphasizing that as part of Vision 2030 and quality of life, 25% of the green space at Nimaraba is dedicated to quality of life. That's 3.5 square kilometers. That's twice the size of Central Park. And the difference is, it's everywhere. It's all around you. You don't have to walk 20 or 30 blocks to get there, which makes it a really special place. You're living, you're working, you're playing in a park. Now when we think about all of this brought together, we're offering a new way of living. I've mentioned already about the concept of physical and digital convergence, and ultimately Nerava provides that at scale everywhere. The proximity is fantastic. 20 to 25 minutes to the airport, which makes it very, very convenient. We will be connected through the metro running from Daria north through Nimaraba, and we also have something which refers to as the DA, which is essentially an 11 kilometer loop that runs around the whole of the perimeter which enables people just to step off of the business of life and to actually be in a place which actually is car-free and is a pedestrian dedicated zone. But when all these things come together, ultimately this is about physical and digital convergence on a grand scale. Um We are open for business now, as Nuraba. As I mentioned earlier, our master plan is approved and 70% of the zoning is approved. We are well advanced with our macabre definition and we're well advanced with our community concepts. So at the end of the day we're looking now to open our doors to the world in terms of investment and partnership opportunities. And they really fall into 3 opportunities. Number 1 is technology opportunities, because simply speaking, we are breaking the boundaries of all technology, and we need the best brains on the planet, the technological leaders to come and participate and work with us. Secondly, real estate. That's all of the real estate asset classes, but actually that runs from pure investment into real estate right the way through to subdevelopment partners and joint ventures with land sales and the like. And then finally, we have the Investment and the partnership opportunities for constructing and building Nuraba over the next 5 to 10 years we're going to need hundreds of thousands of people with the best technologies, the best equipment on the planet, the best leadership on the planet to work with the incredibly talented Saudi contingent to basically bring to life. Naraba, whether it be infrastructure, buildings, development, technology, smart city, and everything else. So thank you very much for your time today. 10 minutes is up. I'm very grateful for the time you've given to me. Please don't be shy. Come and look into Numaba anytime. Thank you so much, Shura.