Forest City, the abandoned city in Malaysia that cost 100 billion dollars.
Forest City: The new city costing 100 billion dollars has been completely abandoned
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A titanic building complex
Perfectly aligned facing the sea, the Forest City building complex is located in Malaysia, not far from the city-state of Singapore. The plan for this new city, designed to accommodate more than 700,000 inhabitants, involved the construction of a series of tall, skyscraper-like residential towers reaching nearly 35 stories. However, the ambitious and expensive project (100 billion dollars) has not yielded any results.
Forest City is a ghost town today
Today, Forest City is a real ghost town: designed on the artificial island in the Strait of Johor, it has been completely abandoned. The deserted streets, silent avenues, empty shops and apartments worry the Chinese developer Country Garden, which is in financial difficulty. The 30km2 city, which was supposed to be a digital and vegetal paradise, attracted just 2,000 residents, including a small team of workers who maintain the area. Restrictions related to the Covid pandemic have likely discouraged buyers from investing in a second home. The futuristic, intelligent and technological Forest City is now deserted. Last December, the BBC aired an interview with a former resident of the ghost town, who confided that he “managed to escape.” The 30-year-old software engineer had settled in Forest City, IN a skyscraper overlooking the sea, and in a one-bedroom apartment. She told the media: “I didn’t care about the deposit or the money, I just wanted to escape from there”. The young man spoke of his discomfort at the idea of being in such a deserted city, without any kind of life form or inhabitant. When he meets the BBC journalist in the skyscraper where he lived, he says that “just the thought of going back there gives him goosebumps.”
