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Designed for 700.000 residents and sold as a futuristic paradise, Malaysia's megacity Forest City is now a vast void with fewer than 10.000 inhabitants, vacant buildings and an uncertain future.
Have you ever imagined a futuristic megacity, full of modern buildings, paradisiacal beaches and water parks, but which, in the end, became practically a ghost town? Well, that's the story of Forest City, a US$100 billion project that had everything to be a success, but ended up becoming one of the biggest real estate flops of our time.
The idea was to build an innovative megacity, right there in Malaysia, close to Singapore. The goal? To create a true luxury haven, where families and businesspeople could live in maximum comfort. But in practice, what we see today are deserted streets, empty buildings and very few residents.
What went wrong? A sequence of fatal errors
Well, there is a long list of reasons for this huge fall. But let's get straight to the point: the main problem was that Forest City was designed with Chinese investors in mind, and that's when a huge bucket of cold water hit the market. The Chinese government decided to tighten the siege and limited the sending of money for overseas investments. The result? The source of buyers simply dried up.
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And it didn't stop there. Malaysia went through political instability that ended up scaring away investors even more. And as if that weren't enough, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, putting another nail in the project's coffin. Travel restrictions and the global economic crisis have made the megacity dream increasingly distant from reality.
The result? A luxury ghost town
It was supposed to be a vibrant metropolis, full of life, but what we see today is an almost post-apocalyptic scenario. Of the 700.000 residents who were supposed to occupy the city, less than 10.000 actually live there. And let's face it, that number is far from justifying the billions invested in the megacity project.
The streets are empty, luxurious buildings remain largely unoccupied and local businesses are barely able to survive. To make matters worse, there have been reports of environmental impacts, as the city was built on land reclaimed from the Straits of Johor. This has compromised tropical mangroves and affected the region's ecosystem, even harming local fishermen.
Is it still possible to save the megacity?
Despite everything, some attempts to reverse the disaster are being made. Malaysia’s Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar has proposed turning Forest City into a special financial zone, offering incentives to attract businesses and residents. The idea is to relocate government offices there and create a new economic hub in the megacity.
And there is another mega project to be implemented, The LINE. It probably won't work either! Megalomania!
There was no brothel and without a brothel, no city can move forward.
'Pile' people is not a sustainable solution for the future of metropolises. Cities have to offer a certain quality of life to their residents. Public transport that works, shopping areas nearby, lots of greenery, leisure activities... Piling people into towers with more than 25 floors certainly does not contribute to the future of cities.