In a recent two-day adventure, the YouTube creators of Yes Theory (@YesTheory) explored Forest City, an almost entirely abandoned city in Malaysia that was intended as a "utopia" and cost $100 billion.
Yes Theory shared its story last October.
"Forest City is a fascinating and massive … city built by a Chinese real estate company," it explained in the video description. "We spent two days exploring this strange and unusual place, and certainly found many things we were not expecting to encounter."
According to the creators, there are a few thousand residents in the city that was intended to house 1 million, and their ultimate goal was to find one of the locals.
They also intended to explore the city's five main areas. Unfortunately, their exploration was hampered by the presence of security guards, who asked them not to film.
"There's like a security guard around every corner, which is a bit confusing because there's, like, … more security guards than there are people here," says a member of Yes Theory. "Don't really know what they're guarding so closely. A little creeped out to be honest."
According to the urban explorers, the area appeared to be extremely well-kept and landscaped, and they used the fully operational shuttle to get around. However, there were few people living there — only workers there to maintain it.
That seems incredibly wasteful from a community that was theoretically built to be green and sustainable. This incredible effort to maintain empty real estate on human-made islands represents money, time, and resources being poured into a black hole. Given how expensive real estate is in the area, it is difficult to imagine the number of residents increasing anytime soon.
However, the creators from Yes Theory did manage to find one resident, Alan, originally from Singapore, who described the atmosphere as "quiet" and "surreal."
"I mean, as is, it's like slowly reviving. It is reviving," says Alan.
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