[Image: The Straights of Johor; Source: pixabay.com; License: CC0, Public Domain]
A Bloomberg report about this city came across my facebook feed from The Seasteading Institute earlier this week. An entire city is being constructed from the ground up (literally!) in the Malaysian Straights of Johor.
Chinese developer, Country Garden Holdings Co, is building a 100 billion dollar city in Malaysian waters between Singapore and Malaysia. In the Malaysian district of Johor Bahru, Forest City is being constructed on top of four artificial islands in the Johor Straight. The project is a joint collaboration in the Iskander Economic Zone among Huawei, SASAKI, and Deloitte. The new site will host office buildings, shopping malls, hotels, parks, and an international school, and it will be home to 700,000 people. Construction began early this year, and Bloomberg reports that 8,000 apartments have already been sold.
The city is designed to be an efficient, environmentally friendly, smart and sustainable city. It is adjacent to natural resources such as wetlands, sea grass, mangrove conservation and 6.2 miles (10 km) of coast line. It is expected to attract business and occupancy from financial institutions, company headquarters, tourism, conferences and e-commerce.
Phase 1 development of this duty-free island will include the following:
- Transportation hubs
- Marina commercial space
- An international conference center
- Shopping
- Hospitals
- Hotels
- Freehold property rights including homes and apartments
This youtube video provides a marketing-style overview of the plans.
References:
$100 Billion Chinese-Made City Near Singapore 'Scares the Hell Out of Everybody, Bloomberg News
Forest City Country Garden, Youtube:Iskander Property Guru
The Seasteading Institute
@remlaps is an Information Technology professional with three decades of business experience working with telecommunications and computing technologies. He has a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and is currently completing a doctoral degree in information technology.