WhereIsAtlas · Cities

What Happened to Forest City, Malaysia's $100B Ghost City?

Built a stone's throw from Singapore for 700,000 people, the $100 billion mega-city of Forest City ended up almost empty - a ghost town on reclaimed land.

Forest City is what happens when a mega-development is built on one volatile buyer pool: China's capital controls and Malaysian politics killed the demand the whole city was designed around, leaving a $100 billion ghost town on reclaimed land.

The city that nobody moved to

Just two kilometers from Singapore, on reclaimed land off Malaysia's Johor coast, sits a forest of luxury high-rises: Forest City. It was conceived as a $100 billion home for 700,000 people, a gleaming cross-border enclave for Chinese buyers.

Instead, only a tiny fraction of those people ever came. Empty towers now rise over the water, and a project pitched as the next great Asian metropolis has become one of the world's most famous ghost towns.

A city for 700,000

China's Country Garden spent billions filling the sea and stacking apartment towers, aiming to sell luxury units to mainland Chinese buyers - and the pitch was compelling. A brand-new city, affordable by Singapore standards, just across the strait.

The scale was staggering: a planned 700,000 residents, schools, shopping and offices, all in a purpose-built development on land that had been open water.

The boom, then the bust

For a few years in the mid-2010s it worked, and Chinese buyers poured in. Then the bubble popped. China's capital controls slammed the door on the outflow of mainland money, and Malaysian politics turned hostile - then-Prime Minister Mahathir criticized the project as a foreign enclave and warned Chinese buyers away.

Sales died and construction stalled. A city built on a single, volatile buyer pool had lost its pool.

The ghost town

The result is a striking emptiness. Planned for 700,000 people, Forest City's developed districts hold a tiny fraction of that - on the order of 9,000 residents. Media report units going for a fraction of the promised price, and scammers moving into the vacant buildings.

The towers are a monument to overbuilding: gleaming on the outside, largely dark at night.

A quiet rethink

There is no clean ending. The project has been retooled on a far smaller, far slower scale - a fraction of the original fantasy - with a pivot away from the apartment blocks and toward a more modest, pragmatic development. It is not gone, but it is nowhere near what it promised to be.

The lesson is a classic one: build a city on a single, easily-shattered demand source, and you will own the ruins.

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