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With a beautiful location overlooking the sea, the Forest City real estate development is located at the southern tip of Malaysia, not far from the city-state of Singapore. This new city was designed to be home to around 700,000 people and consists of a series of skyscraper towers rising to heights of nearly 35 storeys. It’s been an expensive project, with a budget of around $100 billion, but today its buildings are largely unoccupied and its malls quiet.
Forest City was constructed on an artificial island in the Straits of Johor and has already been almost completely abandoned. The deserted streets, silent boulevards, empty shops, and flats are a problem for the financially troubled Chinese developer Country Garden. The 30-square-kilometre town, which was supposed to be a digital and manufacturing paradise, has only attracted 2,000 residents—and that number includes the small team of workers who maintain the area. Restrictions linked to the Covid pandemic deterred some potential buyers from investing and the futuristic, technology-driven smart city is now deserted.
Also read: Inside Al Madam, Sharjah: An abandoned village in the UAE swallowed by sand
Last December, the BBC published an interview with a former resident, who said that he had “managed to escape.” The 30-something computer engineer had settled in Forest City, within the walls of a tower block overlooking the sea, in a one-bedroom flat. He told the BBC reporter, “I didn’t care about my deposit, I didn’t care about the money. I just had to get out.” The young man describes his unease at the idea of being in the desolate city, deserted of almost any form of human life. When he meets the BBC journalist in the tower block where he used to live, he says, “I’m getting goosebumps just being back. It’s lonely around here—it’s just you and your thoughts.”
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