Speaker A
This is the most bizarre city on the planet. It cost uh hundred billion dollars to build and was designed to house 1 million people. Currently, it houses just two. Well, actually, and the and the and the and the camera crew.
Exploring Forest City, Malaysia, a $100B ghost city built for 1M but housing only a few, revealing its empty luxury homes and failed promises.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Forest City is a massive, expensive project that failed to attract residents or businesses.
- Luxury housing is available but largely unsold and unoccupied.
- The city’s infrastructure and amenities exist but lack real community or nightlife.
- Security is tight despite the absence of residents, adding to the eerie atmosphere.
- The project’s failure highlights challenges in large-scale urban developments and real estate speculation.
What the video covers
- Forest City in Malaysia is a $100 billion luxury development designed for 1 million residents but currently houses only two people plus the camera crew.
- The city is heavily guarded despite being almost completely empty, with many luxury homes unsold and unfurnished.
- Only about 10% of the high-end villas sold since 2016, and rental prices are surprisingly affordable around $350/month.
- The nightlife is virtually non-existent with empty restaurants and a single bar staffed only by employees trying to sell expensive alcohol.
- The video explores the strange atmosphere of the city, including security presence and the lack of residents or visitors.
- A local estate agent shows a two-bedroom flat with amenities like a gym and pool, but the city remains deserted.
- The video includes a promotional segment for Revolut, a financial app used for travel and currency exchange.
- The mall and other commercial areas are mostly empty, with only a few shops open and minimal activity.
- A small community known as Network State was shut down abruptly, removing the only active social group in the city.
- Despite the failure, developers are legally required to maintain the city’s pristine condition, and the population has slightly increased from 2% to 4% capacity over two years.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Forest City and its failure
- 01:00Why leave London? The dream of an empty city
- 01:51Exploring the big black building - hotel stay
- 02:46Checking out accommodation and empty homes
- 03:41Luxury villas and low sales rates
- 04:41Strange encounters with workers and security
- 05:35Touring a flat with a local estate agent
- 06:45Revolut sponsorship and rental prices
- 07:41Nightlife and empty restaurants
- 08:56Conclusion and reflections on Forest City
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Where are we? That, my friends, would be Forest City, Malaysia. Forest City. Forest City. forest city in Malaysia. A hundred billion dollar luxury project that has tanked.
Speaker A
And when it was built, developers promised that it would be a dream paradise for all mankind.
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But 8 years old and the complex is virtually empty. So, what happened? Why did nobody ever move here? And how did it all go so badly wrong?
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All right. Uh, my friends, now believe it or not, we're actually here all the way in Malaysia for a bit of a reason.
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Um, he has no clue. But flashback to a bit of an argument we had in the office 2 weeks ago.
Speaker A
Do you think you'll stay in London long term? No. I No, I don't think so. I think London's too busy. I think if we could just get everyone and just get rid of them and it's just me here by myself.
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Just you. Just a city to yourself. That's the dream. The dream. That's Yeah. Oh, that's what that's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Oh, it's great, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, no one's here. Fully stand by that. Okay, so we're about to spend the next 100 hours testing this man's stupid theory and investigating five main factors to see if life really would be better living in
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a city with nobody else. Starting with the housing, mate, where is everyone? How bad is it?
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Enjoy up to 6 months free rent. 6 months. If nobody lives here, why is it so well kept?
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Are they all fully built? Like they're not under construction? No. Yeah, this is all completely built.
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And what's the big black building? The big scary one? Yeah. What's that one? Uh, that's where we're staying.
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Now, my friends, because so little people live here, there wasn't even anyone around to check us into the hotel.
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Are we allowed to? Oh, no. Yeah. No, this one. This one. This one. Okay. So, the code is number 329.
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What can you do? Lots of pictures in here, but not many pictures of people.
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Oh yeah. And we're in. We're on the 39th floor. 39th floor. Then keys in hand, it became apparent we might just be the only people in this entire building.
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Hello. There's no one here, is there? No way. Should we play hide and seek? 10 9 8 7 Well, not you lot, you know. It's just him.
Speaker A
Hello. Hello. Hello. Weird, mate. There's no However, we were here to find out what actually living here was like. So, we left the hotel to see what kind of accommodation Forest City had on offer.
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Hello. Hello. Hi. No. Hello. We can't we going to go for a walk? Cannot cannot.
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No. No. And not just a walk or anything? Yeah. No. Now, this was all very strange. Why would a city with no people in it be so heavily guarded? And what on earth were they hiding?
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They're not allowed in. You can't go in. Can't go in. There's got to be a bush you can sneak through. Surely.
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As it turns out, there was Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh, that's crazy.
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All right, my friends. So, these are called the Pearl Villas. Uh we're walking through a neighborhood of about 300 homes at the minute. We've not seen a single person. And these are like mega mega fancy homes. Some of them are like
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10,000 ft. You're talking like eight bedroom, like seven bathrooms. If you bought them when they were built in 2016, they were selling them for over a million dollars and apparently 10% of them sold.
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Hello. It's like it's not even like there's no people. There's no furniture. Do they get post?
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Looks empty. Doorbell. Should I try the doorbell? Never show that to anyone. Now, despite being a little bit rundown in places, this looked like a nice area.
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Hang on, there's a neighborhood notice board. It's not even like it feels like no one's here now. It feels like no one's been here in years.
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But something was starting to feel off. Hi mate. You No, no. No room. And someone live here?
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No men. No. No humans. No men. No men. Okay. No men. All right. Thanks, man. Have a nice day.
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He's cleaning a house. Like he's sweeping a house. There's nothing in. There's no no one's in there.
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Who do they work for? Then after that strange interaction, we realize that another worker of Forest City seemed to be following our camera team.
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Okay, so we are being followed by one of the workers, which is a bit weird cuz he didn't even look like security. Like he didn't look like he was there to enforce anything. I think he was just maintaining the buildings. But they are
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keeping a close eye. Definitely following us, bro. wide open. Hello. Oh, there's a guy coming. There's a guy coming. Let's go.
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Uh, the thing's through there. Let's walk relatively fast. Yeah. Can you get through here? That's someone's driveway.
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Now, at this point, we realized that if we were going to get a proper understanding of what the housing is actually like in Forest City, we'd have to do things properly. So, we rang up a local estate agent.
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Nice to meet you. I'm Purple. Oh, nice to meet you, Purple. you're looking for ought to rent.
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Then after a bit of back and forth, they agreed to show us around a flat. But first, we'd have to get past security.
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Will they let us in? We're in. Yes. Don't want to intimidate them with my presence, so I'll let him go first.
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What floor is it? 21st. 31st. And has anybody lived in this flat before? So, this two-bedroom, one-b home in Mikey's dream city came with a gym, sports courts, and even a swimming pool.
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We asked the estate agents how much it cost. But before they could tell us, I ran into a bit of a problem. All right, my friends. Now, bit of an emergency.
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just had a notification saying we've had all of our bank cards cancelled for using them abroad is what I would say if we weren't using Revolute who right now will give you £20 if you sign up using my link in the description or the QR
Speaker A
code on screen now. They're also giving you a chance to win £5,000 in their prize draw. My friends, it's great to sign up. It takes literally a couple of minutes. And my friends, Revolute is used by over 13 million people in the UK
Speaker A
alone, including myself. They make trips abroad like this dead easy with their inapp currency exchange. or if you just tap and pay with it and use your usual currency, they'll convert it for you.
Speaker A
Really Metal also has some fantastic travel perks such as discounted access to airport lounges, plus all of the other perks that it comes with.
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Kachchow. On top of that, you get subscriptions to NordVPN, Uber 1, Hinder Gold, Wahhee, worth up to £175 a month.
Speaker A
All of this while you earn something called Rev points, which can be used to be redeemed as airline miles on 30 airlines including British Airways. Or you can use them for gift cards on brands like Amazon and Deliveroo. So, my
Speaker A
friends, please make sure you sign up to Revolute using my link in description or QR code on screen now to get your 20 and a chance to win five grand. Back to the video. Anyway, how much was this flat?
Speaker A
How much is this? $1,500. $1,500 around $350 a month to rent. So, my friends, at that price point, the housing is getting a great big tick. But how would the city's nightife fair in comparison?
Speaker A
There's not one There's not one light. Mate, there is one flat on. The other one's the pool.
Speaker A
As we looked around to take our crew out for the evening, we passed empty restaurant after empty restaurant until we finally managed to find one. Then we headed to the one single bar in the entire city. Okay, now sadly the camera
Speaker A
wasn't rolling at this point, but as we walked into this pub, we were at our class, right? There's there's 10 people in here. This is absolutely bouncing.
Speaker A
However, as soon as we sat down, every single one of them swarmed our table. It turned out literally everybody in that room was staff, and they were all immediately trying to sell us expensive bottles of alcohol. So, uh, that didn't
Speaker A
last long. Should we just bounce? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good. Let's go. All good. No, thank you.
Speaker A
That's so weird. What the was that? Oh my god. Every single person in that bar, there was 10 people. They all work there.
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Nuts. How bizarre. So, slightly less luck for Mikey there if he fancies partying in his new home. However, as we woke up the next morning, we started to see a few signs of life. Excuse me, mate. Do Do you live here?
Speaker A
Um, like for a couple of days. Yeah. Oh, what what you doing here? Uh, NS over the road, the school thing. Oh, sick. Now, admittedly, my friends, right, we've seen millions of YouTube videos on this place before, and they all mentioned
Speaker A
this cultlike group who had recently started living in Forest City. Network school. Network school.
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Metverse school. Network school. We've started new currencies. Could we start new countries? Hey, we want to have our own society. We want to be able to determine our own rules. These people are crazy internet people who don't want
Speaker A
to pay taxes. is they want to like skirt governments and create their own world.
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90% of Americans have lost their way. Network state is a way of resolving that tension. Is it busier than people say it is or no?
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Um, is he filming? Oh, sorry. We we're vlogging. Yeah, we can cut it for sure.
Speaker A
Yeah, I'd rather you just like Of course we can. Of course we can. Yeah, no worries. Now, at this point, we were thinking, why on earth is everybody so reluctant to reveal what's going on here? But there was no time to
Speaker A
investigate network school just yet because we were here to test Mikey's theory. And to do that, we needed to see what amenities Forest City had on offer.
Speaker A
And what we're about to see absolutely blew our mind. Hello. This is the shopping center. So we've got shop fronts. They are just pictures though. You'd expect if it's like, "Oh, there's no shops." It would be like overgrown or whatever. It's so well like
Speaker A
pruned. It's sort of like North Korea, isn't it? You can't compare it positively and go it's like North Korea. Now, this didn't quite look like what the developers of Forest City had promised to their residents.
Speaker A
The first duty-free island and an international shopping paradise. So, we took a look inside the mall to see what else we could find. Oh my god.
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Able to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people. It is a dream paradise for all mankind.
Speaker A
Whoa, mate. There's not a single shot. What? Hey, this is so good. I feel like you could play paintball in here. There's so many possibilities.
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Go-karts. Go-karts. It's like, it honestly looks like, you know, you see like future alien cities.
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It looks really nice. When they were like, "Oh, it's a paradise." You go, "It's not that far from the truth." So, my friends, as we ventured further and further into the mall, we realized that it might not have ended up the
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paradise that they'd been advertising. Some of it is rotting. Yeah, it's not brand new.
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But it did appear that one person at least was trying to keep this place going. Are you you working lighting in here? Is there planning that there's going to be shops in here?
Speaker A
No. But you're just doing lighting. Isn't that so weird though how there's people in here with ladders going to work for no one? Surely it's like fridges and freezers and cookers supposed to go in there, right? Like it's all there and then they just
Speaker A
stopped. Have you seen anything that isn't just a blank room? But what's interesting is there's not even people here to vandalize them because if this was in the UK, you'd find like beer bottles in there. That sort of thing, right?
Speaker A
Nothing. So, it was just me like, "No, that's good. Didn't want it anyway." Cool.
Speaker A
It it but it works. This is the weirdest place. See how good it is being in an abandoned city.
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Honestly, you actually have such a point. But it's like everywhere's your home if no one else is there, right?
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Like this just feels like one big massive shiny living room. And I made sure to test that living room out properly with our cameraman Yan.
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But sadly after that, it was time to leave. No worries. No worries. So then after finding out there wasn't many shops, we went to check out Forest City's other amenities.
Speaker A
What on? It's like it's literally perfect. Where is everyone? Why would you not come and have a little splash?
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The only difference is the lack of people. But other than that, they've actually they've nailed it.
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You are bang on, by the way. Your theory was bang on. This is perfect.
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I can't believe for once, one of my unpopular opinions has got through. It's always, oh, Mike, he's so silly. Mike, he's so dumb. Him and his loony ideas.
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Wow. You take a 100 shots, you're going to make one of them. And eventually, we actually found an open shop.
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Oh, how much are the bikes? You can buy a bike, which my friends was all part of Forest City's original plan. The city integrates various modes of transportation that allow residents to enjoy a better life.
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You name me one other city on Earth, you'd have this much freedom. This is unbelievable. There's just nobody here with around 10 km coastline.
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Yeah, I'm seeing it. It's not far off, right? There's even the people here. In their promotional video on the beach, there was yachts.
Speaker A
Well, okay, we're close. I mean, that'll do for me. Like, that's fair enough. Uh, they also Hey, crocodiles cuz it's been so long since they built it, right? And nobody rocked up. Crocodiles have returned here. So, they used to be here,
Speaker A
then they built it, and then no one came, and then they're like, "Oh, we'll take it back." Is that why no one's swimming? Bit strange for a beach, isn't it?
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Significant lack of swimming for a beach. Now, honestly, we had the time of our lives taking in all that Forest City had to offer. So, it's a big tick from us. However, our next test was about to prove a lot more difficult because to
Speaker A
try and see what type of community he'd be living in, Mikey headed out in search of an actual local.
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Do you live in Forest City? No. Do you live in Forest City? No, sir.
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I just visit my which turned out to be pretty difficult. However, the people who did live here all mentioned one thing.
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NS members? No, we're just here on holiday. What's uh what's NS? NS network school.
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I've been living in this like network school. NS over the road. Now, weirdly, everybody that we met seem to share that one same belief of Mikey's that living in a ghost city might be quite good after all. So, we decided
Speaker A
that we needed to go and find out about this cult for ourselves. This network school we've been hearing about looks a bit weird.
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Now, you can stay at the nest for free by simply recruiting new members. so you can live free, optimize for longevity, and don't die.
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Now, we knew this wasn't going to be easy because everybody we bumped into on this trip had been incredibly secretive about what was going on, apart from one legend called Connor.
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There's a lot of people at network school who had offered to show us around.
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You want to come? You want to come to network? So, we took him up on his offer and headed to their headquarters.
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How's it going? You good? Thank you for this, man. I'm not even sure like how much we're allowed to see because of like security.
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Yeah. So, are they are they quite on it with security? What's the You need like an access card.
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You're just visiting. Yeah. Yeah. Just visiting. How long have you been in the network school?
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Um, now upon arrival, we were greeted with the same sense of suspicion that had been following us all around the city.
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Of these people. And now it was just a matter of waiting to see if the boss man would let us in.
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So, how many people are there here? I would say 500. Now, my friends, after waiting for what felt like an eternity, it was beginning to look like we weren't going to be allowed in. So, Connor decided to try
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and pull some strings. Can we ask the core team? Okay. What's the core team?
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A group of like 20 people who are employees here. They run everything, all the operation.
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I've got a couple of people not at network school, but they say pretty chill and they're doing like a on Forest City.
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He mentioned he's one of the boys. Don't That's That's not going to help anything.
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He said no. Said no. No. Do you know why he said no? Do you know the YouTube channel? Yes.
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Yeah. Yeah. Apparently the leadership was not happy with that. Sorry, guys. Thank you for the night. No, I appreciate you, bro. Lovely to meet you, man. Thank you for Thank you for your time.
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And sadly, it doesn't look like we're going to be finding out any more about Network School anytime soon because in just the days after we filmed this, officials have revoked their license.
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They've ordered the entire operation to be shut down immediately. The doors were locked, the sign was torn down, and network school effectively vanished overnight. And with that, the only tiny community that Forest City had going for it disappeared, too. Meaning for Mikey's
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theory, it's not looking very good on the people's side of things. So, how did everything go so badly wrong here? Okay, we're here in the south of Malaysia, but these homes weren't built by a Malaysian company, and they certainly weren't
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built for the Malaysian people. So, Forest City was actually constructed by a Chinese company called Country Garden.
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And it was intended for Chinese buyers who wanted a second home, an investment property, or a quick way of getting into Singapore. However, uh less than one year after Forest City's grand unveiling, the Chinese government pulled the plug. You see, they were worried
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about the amount of money that their citizens were investing abroad and the impact that would have on their own currency. So what they did uh is they tightened security and blocked all overseas property investments. Things got so bad that Country Garden, they
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shut all of their showrooms and call centers for this place in China. So suddenly there was a whole city built with one specific market in mind that could not buy it. So how are things looking now? Well, as we've seen, the
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developers are still legally obliged to keep this place pristine. And over the last two years, despite this place only housing 2% of its total capacity, the population has doubled. However, two years ago, uh, Country Garden, the company that runs this and is, you know,
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responsible for keeping this place alive, posted yearly operating losses of $4.5 billion and the year before that was $24 billion. Now, they are a massive, massive company and people are coming. You just can't help but wonder what happens to this place if the money
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runs out before they get here. Anyway, we have an incredibly important argument to settle. And with the scores tied heading into the final round, we were about to raise the stakes massively by putting our beloved bikes up for
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grabs as we tested Forest City's crime level. Okay, so I've had a bit of an idea.
Speaker A
Leave them here with the keys in. See if they get nicked. We're going to leave both of these. If we can leave them here. Keys in. They don't get nicked.
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This is officially the best city ever. Keys in. All right. So, we picked two numbered spots completely at random and headed to bed to see once and for all if Mikey's dream city truly existed.
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Can you feel the nerves? I'm not nervous at all. I'm not nervous. Which spot were they again?
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Ah, someone nick MY BRAKES. WHERE'S THE BIKE? Should we ask the security? Maybe they just put them somewhere safe.
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I hope so. Please, please, please, please please. So, my friends, that was it. Sadly, it looked like this ghost CITY HAD PULLED THROUGH AGAIN.
Speaker A
No way. No way. No way. NO WAY. OH, LOOK. THEY'VE neatly arranged the verse.
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And with that, my friends, there was only one thing left to do. to be fair. Deserved.
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All right, my friends. Are there some unnerving parts about this place? Yes. Is some of it a little bit creepy? Yes.
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But on the majority, Mikey, we've had a good time. Yeah, fantastic place. And I think you'll find that you owe me an apology.
Speaker A
Yes. Can we just have a quick round of applause, everybody? Uh for Mikey's first good idea ever. Uh well done, mate. Uh if you lot have enjoyed this video, please feel free to check out another one. You might like this one.
Speaker A
Oh, that's a good one, isn't it? That's my favorite one. A I love they're such a good
Topics:Forest Cityghost cityMalaysiareal estate failureurban developmentluxury housingempty citynetwork stateproperty marketWillNE
