This could be one of the largest developments of a lifetime. This ambitious project is a plan to build a mega city on the mass of four small islands in the Joho straight between Singapore and Malaysia.
The $40 billion project is envisioned by chairman, Yeung Keung, of a private development company based in China, Country Garden, who is striving to build a new world city with skyscrapers looking over lush green forests on several small islands between Singapore and Malaysia. This company holds a grand plan to transform these lush green islands into a soaring city metropolis with skyscrapers going as far as the eye can see. For the public, they will not see any vehicles or roads as they will be underneath the tree canopy that will be the main attraction of these metropolis islands.
This project, however, which has been publicly labelled as the ‘forest’ city, is not escaping any controversy. The proposed forest city with towering skyscrapers and state-of-the-art street lighting will create a new world city, however is being heavily criticised for attempting to buy up the several small islands between Singapore and Malaysia – which is seeing the majority of the local housing being put on the market. The issue here is experts and locals alike believe there is no legitimate demand for the state-of-the-art city development. These claims have however been countered by Country Garden, who point out that the goal of this development is to attract buyers from around the globe, who will hopefully be drawn to the idea of living in a world-first futuristic city of over 300,000 people.
This new world metropolis, forest city, is said to include a number of services including: its own duty free zone, sky gardens, man-made lakes and beaches, schools, medical facilities, commercial buildings with their very own state-of-the-art car par lighting underneath the buildings The island metropolis will even have its own water supply. The philosophy of the developers are that they will create the market for the forest city, and as a result the customers will arrive. At a development conference, Country Garden CEO Mo Bin explained that his company sees the layout of his forest city plan as a template for future cities around the world.
Mo Bin says that the success of Country Garden in China has given them a considerable net of capital to utilise a base platform to enter into the housing market globally, and have stated that they are already active in Australia where they have big plans for the future. The Forest City development will be completed in 2035.
For the full article, please see: https://www.realestate.com.au/blog/china-based-developer-launches-40bn-mega-city-project/