Between 2018 and 2024, I visited Forest City three times. Initially, this artificial island and eco-smart city, located on the southern tip of Malaysia, was not part of my research itinerary; it emerged merely as a side trip during my stay in nearby Singapore. Yet, an inexplicable allure drew me back there repeatedly as the city captured my fascination. Perhaps it was the sheer scale and apparent absurdity of this self-proclaimed “Prime Model of Future Cities” that compelled my return. Master-planned by Sasaki, an interdisciplinary architecture, planning, landscape, and design firm with offices in Boston, Denver, New York, and Shanghai, Forest City was ambitious in its conception. Envisioned to span 1,623.8 hectares, the development was designed to stretch across four interconnected artificial islands and accommodate up to 700,000 residents. All traffic was to be neatly organized and tucked away underground, promoting a walkable, livable community aboveground. Lush vegetation was to envelop both the expansive landscapes and the facades of buildings. Smart technologies were introduced to monitor community demographics and well-being, purportedly to maintain an ideal social and environmental climate—a proposition that remained vague and unspecified in what it meant and how it would be achieved.
A promise too big to fit reality. In 2014, Country Garden Pacificview, the developer behind Forest City, commenced reclamation work that would pave the way for the new metropolis. However, it quickly encountered a myriad of challenges, including environmental impact concerns, geopolitical tensions, and financial constraints. The geographical positioning of the project—encroaching on the sensitive border with Singapore—provoked reevaluations of the project’s feasibility. There were also significant worries over the project’s environmental repercussions, particularly as the islands were planned to be built over vital seagrass meadows that serve as critical ecosystems for marine life. Additionally, marketing efforts predominantly targeted Chinese nationals seeking overseas real estate investments, promoting Forest City as a premier destination located just a stone’s throw from Singapore’s bustling downtown. However, this sales strategy faced a major setback when Beijing enacted a ban on foreign investments by its citizens, an effort primarily aimed at curbing money laundering via international property purchases. As a result, the grand plans for Forest City were curtailed and had to be adapted to align with environmental impact assessment reports and new limitations on financing.
Out of the original four planned islands, only one has been completed. Much of the project’s previously alluring futuristic vision was sacrificed for a more pragmatic, albeit less spectacular, reality. Inside the project sales gallery, visitors can still marvel at a meticulously crafted scale model of the original Forest City, alongside technological proposals from firms such as Cisco, Arup, Accenture, and Huawei for air purification, temperature control, and noise management, as well as face recognition and surveillance software. Yet, a glance out of the gallery window reveals a stark juxtaposition between Sasaki’s supposedly ‘visionary' design fiction and the current state of Forest City; ghostly building towers loom in the distance while a massive car parking lot in the center of the island betrays the reality that, contrary to the project’s promotional narrative, vehicular transport remains the only viable means to navigate this purported utopia.
Despite the management’s continuous efforts to present a polished image to attract potential buyers, visible signs of decay tell a different story. Cracks mar the façades of buildings and streets; a collapsed bridge bears testimony to structural inadequacies. More recent headlines announcing plans for a casino have further fueled rampant rumors on the transformation of Forest City into a more notorious spectacle, often dubbed “Sin City.”
Beyond the manicured edges—literal and metaphoric—of Forest City lies another side of the island, one that is disconnected from its main roads and from its management’s careful curations of future urban life. This feral zone—slated for future development but hanging precariously in limbo—has become a sanctuary for some. Here, plants proliferate chaotically around the residual sand piles left from the reclamation process. Packs of stray dogs roam plots, feeding on trash left by visitors and fiercely protecting their territory from any unwelcome guests. Bangladeshi workers, responsible for maintaining the suave look of the landscape, come to fish in the intertidal waters after finishing their shifts. Trash washed ashore mingles with crabs and resilient mangrove seedlings cling to life in this silt-ridden island section. Further inland, a sinkhole-turned-swamp has inadvertently transformed into a vibrant haven for flocks of birds and a myriad of insects. As dusk blankets this unusual landscape, young Malaysians from the close by villages seeking respite from societal norms gather in an abandoned parking lot. With drinks from Forest City's duty-free shop in hand, they find solace in each other’s company, chatting and dancing in the dim glow of their vehicle lights. Amidst the empty high-rises and immaculate gardens filled with faux flamingos and seals, these neglected plots offer fertile ground for new ecologies to emerge, nurturing life in a place where it might be least expected.
Overcast
★
In meteorological terms, overcast refers to a sky covered with clouds, blocking out direct sunlight. The absence of shadows and the diffusion of light during an overcast day create an eerie, flat illumination, which can intensify a feeling of uncertainty or unease.
★
In forecasting, overcast refers to an error where an estimated metric, such as future cash flows, performance levels, or production, is projected to be higher than reality. Overcasting thus occurs when the estimated value is exceeding the realized one.
The short film Overcast aesthetically explores the uncanny presence of Forest City. Set against the eerie backdrop of this nearly abandoned eco-smart city, the film captures the haunting atmosphere—heavy with disquiet—that envelops its landscape like a fog. Vacant buildings resembling their digital renderings seem to have fallen straight from a planner’s software only to confront material realities and produce an oscillation between utopian ideals and dystopian outcomes. As the camera glides through the city, it reveals not only the physical structures left in disrepair but also the unintended habitats that have emerged in the wake of that decay. Shifting the focus to those who still inhabit this liminal space, the film seeks to shed light on forms of belonging that exist in a place rife with conflicts.
Forest City is indeed full of contradictions: It is variously viewed as fraudulent for the blatant misalignment between its designers’ vision and context; as surprisingly magical for its now thriving flora and fauna; as haunted by recurring sinkholes and fissures; or as sinful for its growing alcohol tourism and impending casino. These conflicting perceptions underscore the complexities surrounding the project and cast doubt on the very aspirations of a smart and green future that cutting-edge technology claims to enable.
Overcast invites reflection on the mismatch between techno-utopian visions and the unpredictable realities that emerge. Here, Forest City stands in for the complexities of contemporary urban development, where the quest for sustainability and technological progress often functions as a distant promise rather than an actual goal. In navigating this space—layered with optimism, regret, and the unknown—Overcast aims to elicit questions about our relationships with the environment, constructed or not, prompting viewers to reflect on the multidimensionality of progress. Despite the gloom of an overcast sky, the film also introduces a contradictory silver lining—just as the sky might eventually clear, Forest City’s emergent ecologies offer hope amid the collapse.
Credits
The short clips presented in this contribution are a work-in-progress preview.
Overcast was commissioned by Against Catastrophe (2023-2024) and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Research and direction: Michaela Büsse
Camera, edit and color correction: Konstantin Mitrokhov
Composition and sound design: Andreas Kühne
Michaela Büsse is an interdisciplinary researcher and postdoc at TU Dresden. She researches environmental speculations and emerging material and territorial configurations in the context of planetary urbanization and climate crisis. Her methods include experimental documentary, sensory ethnography, and critical cartography. Michaela has directed several short films dealing with the recursive relationship between technologies and environments (Common Task (2017), Building with Nature (2022), Prime Model (2022), White Elephant (2022), and Assembling the Coast (2023)). Her work has been widely shown at exhibitions and festivals, and her writings have been published and are forthcoming in e-flux, Postmodern Culture, somatechnics, Antennae, the Future Ecologies series at meson press, the intercalations series at K.Verlag, Environmental Humanities, and the Theory in the New Humanities series at Bloomsbury. In addition to TU Dresden, she is affiliated with the Cluster of Excellence "Matters of Activity. Image Space Material" at the HU Berlin and the Research Institute for Sustainability - Helmholtz Centre Potsdam.