Abandoned, Delayed, and Failed Megaprojects. In this video, we go over the Most Useless and Expensive Megaprojects in the World including Forest City, Hawaii's Interstate H3, and the Strangest City in the World! For more Construction & Megaproject content be sure to subscribe to Top Luxury. Thanks for watching this video: Most Useless Megaprojects in the World.
Forest City, Malaysia’s China-backed US$100 billion ghost town, becomes set for Netflix shows
Forest City, Malaysia’s China-backed US$100 billion mega-complex ghost city, is now serving as a set for a handful of Netflix productions
Malaysia’s US$100 billion China-backed ghost city was meant to house 700,000 people. After few people moved in, developers tried in vain to make it into a tourist hub. Now, the mega-development is serving as a set for a handful of reality shows and documentaries.
The empty city, just over Singapore’s western border, was used for an episode on the second season of Netflix reality show The Mole, which debuted last week. The competition-style reality series follows 12 contestants completing challenges while one of them secretly sabotages the other players. They race to grow a money pot prize and uncover who the traitor is among them. The show’s 10-episode second season was filmed entirely in Malaysia and features Forest City, Kuala Lumpur, and Tioman Island. Filming started in July 2023 and lasted for six weeks, according to local media.
The contestants, who come from various professional backgrounds, complete treasure hunts, free dive, and abseil down a 38-storey building in Forest City. In the third episode of the season, show host and former NPR journalist Ari Shapiro introduced Forest City: “A perfect spot for a glamorous holiday home, for those who can afford it. And most of the year, they lie empty.” The city was also featured in other recent shows. South Korea’s KBS filmed an episode of the travel reality series Battle Trip, while Germany’s ProSieben TV filmed a short documentary about Forest City. An Austrian documentary titled Hungry: Tipping the Scales was shot there too. Announced in 2006, the luxury public housing estate was meant to feature flats, a water park, and hotels. The whole project cost its developers US$100 billion.
Forest City enters list of world’s ‘most useless’ megaprojects
The listing places Forest City in the same league as other controversial projects around the world cited in the video, including Ciudad Real Central Airport in Spain, Interstate H-3 in Hawaii, and Naypyidaw, the new capital of Myanmar. – Forest City Johor Facebook pic, November 17, 2021
Malaysia’s controversial Forest City has been labelled as the second most useless megaproject in the world, behind the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, United States. The listing was featured in a YouTube video by Top Luxury, a channel established in March 2020 specialising in content on construction, megaprojects, and technology. The video in question has since garnered upwards of four million views at the time of writing.
“Forest City was probably too ambitious to begin with, too futuristic to truly achieve, and is too politically challenged to succeed anytime soon. “It is safe to assume that despite the billions (of dollars) invested, Forest City is currently a useless megaproject,” the video said. It highlighted that the project near Johor Baru is being funded mainly by China, with wealthy Chinese investors unable to afford the soaring prices of apartments in their own country rushing to Forest City. “By 2019, 80% of the property owners (in Forest City) were Chinese. Even the street signs were in Mandarin and the few schools that opened in the area offered Mandarin courses,” the video’s narrator claimed.
“This influx of Chinese investors caused a public outcry, with opponents of the project calling it a new form of colonialism.” It further alleged that Malaysians cannot afford to purchase properties in the smart city as the prices cater to the Chinese market. “By the start of 2020, less than 500 people were actually living in the residential developments, which is not a lot considering that Forest City is designed for 700,000 people,” it claimed. “The project has remained in flux ever since, with some salespeople claiming that fewer than 10 homes were sold in Forest City since the start of the pandemic.”
Forest City: A Prime Model Of Future Cities
Forest City is the enterprise of Country Garden Pacificview Sdn Bhd, a joint venture between Country Garden Group and the Malaysian-government-backend Esplanade Danga 88 Sdn Bhd (EDSB)
Compromising four man-made islands spanning 30km2, the newly-built Forest City will be a smart and green futuristic city that combines environment, technology and cutting-edge technology to create an ideal, idyllic and technology-driven living and working space ecosystem. This is a unique opportunity to be part of this dynamism.
As a group of four man-made islands, Forest CIty is first and foremost, visually distinct from the other developments and townships in Iskandar. It also distinguishes itself in other ways; in building Forest City as independent islands from the ground up, Country Garden Pacificview has the freedom to create an urban landscape and key elements that foster an ideal living environment. These unique features will also enhance the security and privacy of Forest City.
Forest City, Johor
Forest City is an integrated residential development and private town located in Iskandar Puteri, Johor, Malaysia on a land 1,370 hectares wide. First announced in 2006 as a twenty-year project, the project was pitched under China's Belt and Road Initiative.
It was officiated by then-Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak in 2016, with the approval of the Sultan of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim Ismail. Forest City is a joint venture between Esplanade Danga 88, an affiliate of state government subsidiary Kumpulan Prasarana Rakyat Johor (KPRJ), through a joint venture, Country Garden Holding Ltd (CGPV), with CGPV holding 60 percent of shares, while KPRJ holds the other 40 percent. Forest City is under the management of the Iskandar Puteri City Council and the Iskandar Regional Development Authority. The development of Forest City is contentious. The project was largely not targeted at local Malaysians but rather at upper-middle-class citizens from China who were looking to park their wealth abroad, by offering relatively affordable seafront properties compared to expensive coastal cities within their country such as Shanghai. However, initial strong sales from China collapsed after its leader Xi Jinping implemented currency controls, including a $50,000 annual cap on how much buyers could spend outside the country. Such lackluster sales were exacerbated by the 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, with the project now being described as a "ghost town". The project, which is located on reclaimed land, has also been criticised for causing large amounts of habitat destruction in the vicinity
Despite being marketed as "an energy-efficient, ecologically sensitive, land-conserving, low-polluting offshore city", the development has had significant negative environmental impact, with irreversible damage due to reclamation of ecologically sensitive coastal wetlands. The area within which Forest City lies is protected as an Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) Rank 1 area, where no development is allowed except for low-impact nature tourism, research and education. Chief to this designation are two areas of international ecological significance, the Tanjung Kupang intertidal seagrass meadow, the largest of its kind in Malaysia, and the Pulai River Mangrove Forest Reserve, designated as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. Reclamation began in January 2014 without the legally required Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA). Residents from Kampung Tanjung Kupang, a traditional fishing village, complained of reduced catches and other issues to the local and Johor State authorities to no avail.
