Jeddah Tower and the Global Housing Crisis

On a hazy afternoon in Jeddah, cranes appear almost fragile against the desert horizon. At street level, the rising concrete core of the future Jeddah Tower already seems unreal, as though someone enlarged an ordinary skyscraper and never stopped. Taxi drivers ease off the accelerator to gesture towards it. Labourers take selfies during their breaks. Online, people repeatedly enlarge and reduce the visualisations: a glass needle, one kilometre tall, piercing the clouds.

At the same time, on the far side of the world, a young couple flick through rental adverts on a phone with a cracked display. The sums simply will not work. Their hope of “a small place of our own” recedes further each month, like a mirage.

We live in a world capable of raising a 1,000-metre tower from desert sand, yet unable to ensure that people have a decent home.

At a basic level, something is badly wrong.

A kilometre into the sky as people count rent coins

The central contrast is stark and uncomplicated. Saudi Arabia intends to construct the world’s tallest skyscraper while millions of people, across multiple continents, cannot get onto the property ladder at all. No doctorate in urban planning is needed to recognise the disconnect.

If it is finished, Jeddah Tower will stand at roughly 1,000 metres. That is about the equivalent of three Eiffel Towers placed one above another. The project is intended as a gleaming expression of ambition: oil wealth transformed into a vertical monument of steel and glass.

For people observing from overcrowded flats or the childhood bedrooms they have never been able to leave, however, it can feel more like a provocation.

Consider an entirely familiar example: a 32-year-old nurse in London, finishing night shifts and browsing property apps on the bus home. She earns more than either of her parents did, yet even the least expensive studio requires a deposit that would take years to build up, if nothing went wrong.

She tells her friends that she will be “the flatmate aunt” for ever. But the joke has lost its humour. Her rent rises more quickly than her pay. Mortgage rates jump. Homes she once believed she might buy have become “investment products” for strangers she will never encounter.

Then a sponsored Instagram post appears: a glossy film promoting Saudi Arabia’s mega-projects, complete with the one-kilometre spire. Luxury shopping centres. Sky villas. Helicopter footage. She double-taps it with near-ironic amusement, then carries on scrolling.

That is the split screen of this era. On one side are countries competing for skylines that are taller, shinier and more recognisable. On the other are ordinary people disputing a broken heater with their landlord or working out whether a two-room flat can accommodate a second child.

Saudi Arabia’s leadership argues that developments such as Jeddah Tower will diversify the economy and draw tourists and businesses. It is a mega-symbol designed to demonstrate that the country is about more than oil. Its critics regard it as a monument to inequality: a dazzling diversion while everyday hardship and basic rights remain unresolved.

The straightforward reality is that a kilometre of glass does not automatically create homes that people can afford to occupy.

Jeddah Tower: wonder, anger and uncomfortable questions

Listen to discussions about Jeddah Tower and three distinct responses emerge. Some are captivated. They talk about engineering brilliance, human advancement and the excitement of “pushing limits”. They circulate visualisations as enthusiastically as other people share photographs of babies.

Others are openly furious. To them, the tower is a middle finger aimed at everyone confined to overpriced studios or deteriorating social housing. It represents a system that always seems able to fund prestige schemes but never basic dignity.

A quieter group sits somewhere between admiration and discomfort, attempting to hold both reactions at once. That is probably where most people are.

Set the figures alongside each other and the unease becomes more intense. Estimates for Jeddah Tower have exceeded a billion dollars, sometimes rising further according to delays and redesigns. That figure excludes the surrounding district and infrastructure necessary to sustain it.

Contrast that with housing emergencies in major cities. In Los Angeles, tens of thousands of people sleep in cars, on pavements and in encampments. In Paris, workers travel two hours in each direction because the city centre has become a luxury postcard. Across many places, an acceptable one-bedroom home consumes half of a person’s income.

Most of us know that moment: looking at the month’s rent and wondering whether the system was designed by anyone who has ever had to worry about paying it.

Politically, Saudi Arabia’s mega-tower forms part of a much broader wager. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman aims to reshape the country as a futuristic global power. There is NEOM in the desert, giga-projects on the Red Sea, entertainment cities and, in Jeddah, this immense spike rising upwards.

Supporters say that projects bold enough to seem outrageous win international attention, generate employment and speed up change within a conservative society. Opponents respond with other questions: employment for whom, homes for whom and progress for whom? They raise concerns about labour conditions, environmental impacts and what follows after the cameras move on.

Let us be frank: almost nobody thinks that reaching into the clouds will suddenly repair what is failing at ground level.

What to do when the skyline seems rigged

When confronted with such a spectacle, feeling insignificant is easy. The tower is, quite literally, designed to produce that sensation. Still, practical actions can return the discussion to a scale where you can act.

Begin locally. Find out who really owns the buildings in your area. Many cities now release information on major landlords, vacant properties and corporate ownership. Knowing this changes both the way you discuss rent and the people you hold accountable.

After that, take another step: join a tenants’ union, housing collective or even a neighbourhood WhatsApp group that discusses more than missing cats. Housing debates rarely shift because one person makes a complaint. They move when many people compare what has happened to them.

One frequent pitfall is slipping into complete cynicism. You endlessly scroll news about mega-projects, bitterly laugh at images of desert vertical forests and insist that “nothing will change anyway”. The numbness makes sense, but it also quietly serves the status quo.

A better approach is selective involvement. You need not become an activist overnight. Start by having more candid conversations with friends, voting with housing policy in mind and asking uncomfortable questions when politicians boast about “iconic” structures rather than liveable neighbourhoods.

If you feel guilty about caring about your own housing pressure while skyscrapers emerge from the desert, let that guilt go. Your problem is not insignificant. It is the frontline.

“We are building monuments to our engineering ego,” a European urban planner told me recently, “while treating affordable housing like a side project. One day we’ll look back and wonder how we got the priorities so upside down.”

• Ask where the money goes
  Whenever a city, region or country unveils a mega-project, examine the accompanying budget for social housing or rent assistance. If it cannot be found, that silence is an answer in itself.
• Follow the workers’ stories
  Every futuristic visualisation depends on real people pouring concrete, installing lifts and cleaning glass. Their wages, safety and living conditions reveal more about a project’s ethics than any polished promotion.
• Defend boring, liveable projects
  Social housing, co-operatives and modest refurbishments seldom attract headlines. Yet these supposedly “unsexy” schemes quietly stop thousands of people from falling through the cracks.
• Share your own housing journey
  Discussing rent, debt or exclusion from home ownership once felt taboo. Ending that silence reveals patterns that politicians and developers cannot ignore indefinitely.

A tower reflecting what we value

Jeddah Tower remains under construction, with its eventual height and completion date uncertain. In some respects, this makes it an even stronger symbol: a promise only partly built, an enormous “coming soon” notice on the skyline. It does more than divide opinion; it demands a question.

What does society choose to celebrate as achievement? Is it reaching the clouds with luxury flats and sky lobbies, or a generation quietly being able to say, “I can finally afford a stable home”?

Saudi Arabia’s one-kilometre ambition is not isolated. It belongs to the same global logic that converts cities into assets, homes into commodities and skylines into contests. That is why news from Jeddah can feel personal to people thousands of kilometres away. The tower may be distant, but its emotional resonance is immediate: if money exists for this, why is there never enough for us?

Perhaps that is the real divide exposed by the project. It is not a line between East and West, wealthy and poorer nations, or progressives and conservatives. It is between people who regard housing as a human anchor and those who see it as one more field in which height, spectacle and profit must always prevail.

The world will continue to build upwards. The true issue is whether it can still build fairly.

FAQ:

• Question 1 Is Saudi Arabia really building a 1km tall skyscraper?
  Yes. The Jeddah Tower project is intended to reach around 1,000 metres, which would make it the tallest building in the world if completed. Construction has experienced delays and restarts, but the goal remains unchanged: a kilometre-high landmark on the Red Sea coast.

• Question 2 How does this tower relate to the global housing crisis?
  There is no direct connection through a single budget line, but both reflect the same outlook. Governments and investors devote substantial funding and attention to prestige developments, while everyday housing is treated as a cost to reduce. That contrast intensifies the frustration of people shut out of decent homes.

• Question 3 Could mega-projects like this still benefit ordinary people?
  They can generate jobs, infrastructure and, in some cases, reforms. The key issue is distribution: who receives the jobs, who can live or work there and who gains lasting security? Without robust social policy, the benefits often remain concentrated at the top.

• Question 4 Why do countries keep chasing record-breaking skyscrapers?
  It is partly pride, partly branding and partly economic strategy. A record-breaking tower projects power and modernity, draws investors and tourists, and puts a city on the global map. That rationale can eclipse quieter yet more necessary spending on public housing and services.

• Question 5 What can I realistically do about rising housing costs?
  You cannot rewrite housing policy alone, but you can join tenants’ groups, back candidates who put affordable housing first, demand transparency over ownership and speak openly about your circumstances. Small actions, repeated by thousands of people, are how the debate gradually changes.