Johor’s Forest City Faces Critical Challenges

Abstract

This paper will take a closer look at the sustainability of the Forest City project — both economic and environmental, and explore the market for the final product on offer, the political entanglements that have emerged, and the actual economic costs of the project as a whole. It also provides an update to the DEIA report that was ordered in January 2015. It argues that the economic value of the project might be overstated, given its actual environmental and social costs. While the initial motivation was based on a clear vision and on worthy goals, the implementation has elicited many questions due to some lack of clarity, and the consequences of divergent objectives at lower levels of the project hierarchy and among its stakeholders. The socio-cultural implications of the Forest City project, while numerous, will be discussed in a subsequent publication.