A Guide to the New Cities Being Built Around the World | 2025 Edition

Building a new city is the loftiest, craziest, and most ambitious real estate project imaginable. But that doesn’t stop people from trying it, and it’s our job here at Thesis Driven to track them.

Today’s letter is our third annual edition of our guide to the new cities being built around the world. They range from futuristic pet projects of autocrats to cryptocurrency hubs to utopian endeavors and everything in between.

For each city we’ll tackle:

• The basics of the project;
• Our standard metrics (🧠s, 🚇s, 🪚s, and 🏗️s, measuring innovativeness, quality of urbanism, oppression, and feasibility, respectively)
• How it’s progressing (or not), measured in 📈s;
• Any updates to our ratings.

We’ll dive in after the break!

Want to build a new city? You’ve gotta start somewhere, and knowing how to raise real estate capital is going to be an essential skill—whether you’re looking to build the next urban metropolis or a duplex down the street.

Our next virtual cohort of our five week Fundamentals of Capital Raising course starts on March 31st—check it out here!

Category I: Autocratic Ambition

The most surefire way to build a new city is to rule a country by fiat and command that a new city be built. Easy! So it’s no surprise that some of the most rapidly-progressing new city projects out there come from countries that are less-than-full democracies.

1. Neom | Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s hyper-ambitious metropolis under development along the country’s Red Sea coast is perhaps the best-known example of a new city under development today.