Mega-City Projects in Developing Asia: Lessons for GMC

Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), announced by Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck in December 2023, is a 2,500 km² Special Administrative Region with an estimated cost of $100 billion. It joins a growing list of ambitious planned city projects in the developing world, several of which have experienced significant setbacks, scaling back, or outright failure. This article examines the outcomes of comparable projects in Asia and identifies patterns relevant to GMC's prospects.

Forest City, Malaysia

Forest City is a $100 billion development built on four artificial islands off the coast of Johor, Malaysia, near Singapore. Developed by Chinese property company Country Garden, the project was designed to house 700,000 residents in a futuristic green city spanning 11.5 square miles.^[1]

What went wrong: By 2024, approximately 2,000 people — primarily maintenance workers — lived in Forest City, earning it the label "ghost city." The project's collapse stemmed from multiple factors:

• Single-market dependence: Forest City relied almost exclusively on Chinese buyers. When Chinese President Xi Jinping implemented currency controls limiting offshore spending to $50,000 per year, sales collapsed.
• Political instability: Malaysia's 2020-2022 political crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic compounded sales problems.
• Isolation: Built on reclaimed islands far from major urban centers, Forest City lacked the organic urban fabric — schools, markets, cultural life — that makes cities livable.
• Developer financial crisis: Country Garden itself faced a financial crisis as part of China's broader property market downturn.

Current status: As of 2025, Forest City is being repositioned as a tax-free financial hub within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, offering corporate tax rates between zero and five percent — a pivot that bears notable resemblance to GMC's own tax-haven approach.^[2]

Lessons for GMC: Forest City demonstrates the risks of building a city without organic demand, the vulnerability of projects dependent on a narrow investor base, and the difficulty of creating community in purpose-built developments. GMC faces similar isolation challenges — Gelephu is a small border town in landlocked Bhutan, far from any major commercial center.

Neom and The Line, Saudi Arabia

Neom is a $500 billion planned mega-city in northwest Saudi Arabia, the flagship project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 economic diversification plan. Its most prominent component, The Line, was originally conceived as a pair of parallel mirrored skyscrapers stretching 170 kilometers through the desert.^[3]

What went wrong: By 2025, The Line had been scaled back from 170 kilometers to 2.4 kilometers — a reduction of over 98 percent. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund commissioned external consulting firms to review the project's feasibility, with outcomes potentially including further downsizing or fundamental redesign. Management culture at Neom was described as one that "belittles the workforce, makes unrealistic demands and turns a blind eye to discrimination," leading to mass departures of international recruits.

Human rights dimension: The project required the forced displacement of members of the Howeitat tribe from their ancestral lands. Saudi authorities demolished homes without adequate compensation or alternative housing. One tribal member was killed, three were sentenced to death, and three others received 50-year prison sentences on terrorism charges for resisting eviction.^[4] The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report expressing concern.

Lessons for GMC: Neom demonstrates that even with sovereign wealth exceeding $900 billion, ambitious mega-city projects face feasibility limits. The human rights parallels — forced displacement of an existing community to make way for a utopian development — resonate with concerns about GMC's construction on land from which Lhotshampa were expelled. Saudi Arabia, however, has financial resources that dwarf Bhutan's by a factor of approximately 300.

Nusantara, Indonesia

Nusantara is Indonesia's planned new capital city on the island of Borneo, conceived to replace the sinking and overcrowded Jakarta. The project, initiated under President Joko Widodo, was originally estimated at $29-35 billion, with 80 percent expected from private investment.^[5]

What went wrong: Under President Prabowo Subianto, who took office in October 2024, state funding for Nusantara was cut from $2.4 billion in 2024 to $850 million in 2025, with only $365 million allocated for 2026. The Finance Ministry froze construction budgets. Private investment fell more than $1.2 billion short of targets. Indonesia's new sovereign wealth fund, Danantara, stated it would not prioritize Nusantara funding.^[6]

In September 2025, Nusantara was quietly reclassified from a full capital to merely a "political capital," a downgrade that weakened its commercial logic and exposed private investors to greater risk. By late 2025, only about 2,000 civil servants and 8,000 construction workers lived in the city, far below the 2030 target of 1.2 million.^[7]

Lessons for GMC: Nusantara shows how planned cities are vulnerable to political transitions. The project lost its champion when Widodo left office and his successor had different priorities. GMC, as a royal initiative in a constitutional monarchy, may be less vulnerable to this specific risk, but the broader lesson — that long-term megaprojects require sustained political will across decades — applies. Indonesia's GDP ($1.4 trillion) is over 400 times Bhutan's, yet Nusantara is struggling to attract investment.

Amaravati, India

Amaravati was conceived as the new capital of Andhra Pradesh following the state's bifurcation in 2014, with a masterplan by Foster + Partners and an estimated cost of $6.5 billion for the initial phase. The project involved a land pooling scheme in which 33,000 acres were acquired from 29 villages along the Krishna River.^[8]

What went wrong: When the opposition YSR Congress Party won elections in 2019, the new government effectively shelved Amaravati in favor of a "three capitals" model. Construction halted, land lay idle, and farmers who had contributed land through the pooling scheme were left without the promised returns. A Comptroller and Auditor General report found that land acquired through the scheme had been lying idle after spending Rs 2,244.94 crore (approximately $270 million).

After the Telugu Desam Party returned to power in 2024, Amaravati was revived, but a decade of political reversals had eroded investor and public confidence. A proposal for additional land acquisition for "Amaravati 2.0" faced cabinet-level opposition in 2025.

Lessons for GMC: Amaravati demonstrates the vulnerability of planned capitals to electoral cycles and the human cost of land acquisition schemes that fail to deliver on promises. The land pooling controversy — farmers who surrendered agricultural land in exchange for developed plots that never materialized — offers a cautionary parallel for any land-related commitments GMC makes to existing residents or displaced communities.

Songdo, South Korea

Songdo International Business District, built on 600 hectares of reclaimed land outside Incheon starting in 2002, is often cited as the world's first "smart city." The $40 billion project was designed to attract 300,000 residents and serve as a Northeast Asian business hub.^[9]

Partial success: Unlike the other cases examined here, Songdo has achieved a measure of viability. By 2023, it had attracted about 70,000 residents and 33,000 jobs — approximately 65 percent of target population and employment figures. The city constructed 22 million square feet of LEED-certified space and achieved a 76 percent waste recycling rate.

Shortcomings: Despite its achievements, Songdo has been described as "lonely" by Bloomberg, lacking the organic cultural and social life of established cities. Built around centralized control systems, the city proved rigid and slow to adapt. Cheaper alternatives in nearby Seoul and Incheon limited its attractiveness to residents and businesses. The project took over 20 years to reach its current state and has still not met its original targets.^[10]

Lessons for GMC: Songdo is perhaps the most instructive comparison for GMC because it represents the best-case scenario for a planned city: built in a wealthy, technologically advanced country (GDP $1.7 trillion), adjacent to a major international airport and a metropolitan area of 30 million people, with strong government backing. Even so, it took two decades to achieve 65 percent of its targets. GMC faces far greater challenges — a smaller economy, more remote location, less infrastructure, and a less developed investor base — while aspiring to a larger scale.

Common Failure Patterns

Analysis of these projects reveals several recurring patterns that pose risks for GMC:

Pattern	Examples	GMC Risk Level
Cost vastly exceeds national capacity	All projects	Very high ($100B vs $3.4B GDP)
Dependence on uncertain foreign investment	Forest City, Nusantara	High (FDI averaged 0.3% of GDP)
Displacement of existing communities	Neom, Amaravati	High (prior Lhotshampa expulsions)
Remote location, weak connectivity	Forest City, Nusantara	High (landlocked, border town)
Political vulnerability across cycles	Amaravati, Nusantara	Lower (royal initiative)
Lack of organic demand	Forest City, Songdo	High (population 780,000)
Utopian renderings vs. built reality gap	Neom, Forest City	High (BIG masterplan stage)

What Makes GMC Different

Proponents argue that GMC differs from these comparators in several ways. Unlike Neom or Nusantara, GMC is a royal initiative in a constitutional monarchy where the King retains substantial authority and public trust, potentially providing more durable political backing than elected leaders can offer. Bhutan's international brand — associated with Gross National Happiness, environmental stewardship, and cultural authenticity — is distinctive and may attract investors motivated by values alignment rather than purely financial returns.

GMC's phased development approach, with initial targets of 100,000 residents rather than immediate full build-out, theoretically allows for course corrections. The project's border location adjacent to India's northeastern markets provides a potential economic catchment area. And Bhutan's track record of managing large-scale projects — particularly hydropower — while imperfect, demonstrates institutional capacity for complex undertakings.

However, none of these differentiators address the fundamental challenge that GMC's cost estimate exceeds the national GDP by a factor of 30, a ratio unmatched by any of the comparator projects. Even Neom, backed by one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, has been forced into dramatic scaling-back. The question is not whether GMC will face challenges, but whether it can adapt its ambitions to match its means — something that most of its predecessor projects have struggled to do.

See also

• Gelephu Mindfulness City: Environmental Impact
• Gelephu Mindfulness City: Economic Analysis
• Tax and incentive regime of Gelephu Mindfulness City
• Spiritual projects of Gelephu Mindfulness City

References

1. Malaysia's Forest City Went From Boomtown to Ghost Town — Foreign Policy
2. Forest City Malaysia: From Ghost Town to Financial Frontier — Resident
3. Saudi Arabia seeks advice from consultants on The Line feasibility — Dezeen
4. The Dark Side of Neom: Expropriation, Expulsion and Prosecution — ALQST
5. Inside Nusantara, Indonesia's $29 Billion New Capital Plagued by Delays — Bloomberg
6. Nusantara construction faces delays as govt freezes new capital budget — The Jakarta Post
7. Indonesia's new capital city Nusantara downgraded to political capital — Dezeen
8. How Amaravati Has Gone From Grand Blueprint to Ghost Town — The Wire
9. International Case Studies of Smart Cities: Songdo, Republic of Korea — IDB
10. Songdo two decades on: The cautionary tale in smart city design — TNGlobal