Forest City might be one of the greatest achievements in modern urban development. I am someone hard to impress, but I admit I marvelled when I visited the early stage site of this massive Chinese backed project in Malaysia.
The developer is the award winning Country Garden Pacific view.
Conveniently located a few minutes drive away from Singapore’s second link to Malaysia (Tuas), Forest City is a dream city come true.
On Google Maps you are probably going to see nothing but the blue sea of the strait of Malacca. In fact Forest City will rise on 4 islands of reclaimed land currently being built.
Unlike other reclaimed land projects, this innovative city will not need to wait 8 years for the land to settle. In fact the most advanced engineering technology is able to build huge pillars deeply set on the sea bed.
Then those pillars will serve as bearing and support to multiple layers of the city. So while the bottom layer rests for 8 years, it is business as usual on the storey above.
The top level is on surface and will host a green city, home to only bicycles, electric trains and green vehicles.
Polluting vehicle will be able to transit mostly underground in a net of highways and roads that the city will never see.
Car parks will be abundant and only underground, making the surface look like a real forest. Irrigation will be provided both horizontally and vertically, bringing water all the way up to most buildings.
Each floor of the green buildings will feature high rise gardens, making them look like gigantic trees rather than skyscrapers. Although it is just at the beginning, the rain pour of investment money from China is going to let the magic happen in less than 10 years.
A mind blowing $100 billion investment is the fuel to the construction of hundreds of thousands of units aimed to accommodate nearly 800 thousand residents.
As a sign of luxury and quality, the three golf courses will be designed by the one and only golf legend Jack Nicklaus. Bungalows and semi detached villas will have private beaches at the front yard.
To support family activities, the American boarding school Shattuck-St Mary is already operating within Forest City.
Forest City will also generate approximately 220 thousand jobs for the local population by 2035.
To encourage foreign companies to set up shop in Forest City, the entire area has been declared Free Trade Zone.
The catchy tax terms have already attracted major companies such as, but not limited to the ride sharing giant Grab (valued $27 billion), Huawei, Cisco, Accenture, Midea, China Construction Steel Structure Corporation, Deutsche Bank (Asia Pacific) and Bank of China (Malaysia). All together the companies who decided to establish a branch in Forest City are valued in excess of $1 trillion.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib sees Forest city as one of the most important signs that Malaysia is ready for the future.
A high speed train will be connecting Singapore to China transiting through the Sultanate of Johor, where Forest City is located. It is going to be a new silk route that will connect the ever expanding South East Asia to the ever growing (richer) China.
Singapore (which understand the potential synergy opportunity) has already agreed to extend the Tuas immigration checkpoint to “flow” into Forest City, making the access to the city nearly seamless.
I attended one of the launch events — which sold out 7 towers of 30 floors each — and I was truly blown away.
The city model was build over a surface of over 200 square metres.
A cinema theatre was set up to play a 6 minutes video to introduce Forest City to potential buyers.
Another model of the first island occupied nearly 300 square metres in a main hall, where buyers participated in a lottery that gave away 160 grams of gold, in perfect Chinese style.
Everything is ready to impress the world at Forest City, Johor, Malaysia.
Stefano Virgilli
stefano@virgilli.com
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