WhereIsAtlas · Property development
Forest City
The $100B Malaysian mega-city that became a ghost town
Transformed — A planned $100B mega-city near Singapore that became a ghost town - only a tiny fraction of its 700,000 people arrived.
Forest City was to be a $100 billion, 700,000-person city on reclaimed land in Johor, Malaysia, barely two kilometers from Singapore - luxury apartment towers, a cross-border enclave aimed squarely at mainland Chinese buyers.
It launched in 2016 to huge hype. Then the bottom fell out. China's capital controls froze the flood of mainland money, and Malaysian politics turned against the project, with then-Prime Minister Mahathir criticizing it and warning away foreign buyers. Sales collapsed and construction stalled.
The result looks like a ghost: planned for 700,000 residents, only a small fraction - on the order of 9,000 - have moved in. Empty towers rise over the reclaimed land, media report scammers and vacancy, and a mega-vision has become a cautionary tale about building a city on a single, volatile buyer pool.
Quick facts
- Developer
- Country Garden
- Planned scale
- ≈ $100B · 700,000 people
- Location
- Johor, Malaysia (2km from Singapore)
- Residents
- ≈ 9,000 (tiny fraction)
- Killers
- China capital controls + politics
Sources
- Malaysia built a $100 billion city; only 9,000 came — Economic Times (2026-02-05)
- The £80bn ghost city full of skyscrapers built for 700k — Daily Express (2026-02-05)
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