A Malay sultan, a Chinese property developer, and a private gated city in the ocean: A tale of informality from above

Abstract

Forest City is an audacious project that, on the face of it, seems technologically and politically impossible to build. A private, gated city for up to 700,000 people by one of China’s top property developers, Forest City is being constructed on artificial islands atop the largest seagrass field in Malaysia and was conceptualized primarily as a securitized enclave and investment vehicle for Chinese nationals. How is it that a Chinese property developer was able to secure permission to construct a private, gated city on a series of artificial islands that damages the surrounding ecology and livelihoods of Indigenous and Malay villagers and creates an elite ethnicized enclave controlled by a foreign company? This paper examines the Sultan of Johor’s role in facilitating the creation of Forest City using the framework of ‘informality from above’, a concept developed by Ananya Roy to argue that informality is not exclusively the domain of the landless poor who squat without permission on public or private land, but is a characteristic of how elites get luxury urban mega-developments off the ground. While the Sultan of Johor is known to wear many hats as an official royal figure and as a businessman, this article draws attention to some of the conflicts of interest and ambiguities relating to his role in urban development.