People of different fields came together for the same dream of building a smart city.

The prospect of a gleaming, green, high-tech experimental city was personally motivating to participants from diverse industry backgrounds, ranging from software to real estate development to city government. Their enthusiasm for the project’s unique combination of technical innovation and bold demonstration of new possibilities brought people together and gave them, for all their differences, a shared identity.

In its quest to build a global empire, Uber has turned to the Middle East for its biggest infusion of cash from a single investor. Uber said on Wednesday that it had raised $ 3. 5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the kingdom’s main investment fund, in one of the largest-ever investments into a privately held start-up.