On four man-made Malaysian islands, Chinese developer Country Garden is building a huge new city. In one of the ads, the company bills it as “a dream paradise for all mankind.”
Called Forest City, the $100 billion metropolis will be able to accommodate 700,000 people. That’s about 20,000 more than the current population of Washington, DC — and it will have a density greater than Manhattan.
A new video taken by a drone offers a look at Forest City’s construction, which began in early 2016:
As you can see, a few apartment buildings and park spaces have already sprouted up, and some other towers are in progress. When Forest City is complete by 2040, it will have office buildings, parks, a transit network, hotels, restaurants, shops, schools, and 250,000 housing units.
While the mega-development sounds promising, several experts worry it could becomea ghost city, failing to attract the residents it needs to become a thriving metropolis. Since the 1970s, Chinese developers have built some-500 ghost cities in…