Skip to main content

Top 10 Cities That Didn’t Exist in 1960

10. Incheon, South Korea

incheon
The city of Incheon, in South Korea, is just miles from the North Korean border.  With a population of nearly 3 million, it is the third largest city in South Korea.  In 1994, the South Korean government, with a keen eye toward the future, decided to undertake a bold plan to reclaim land from the sea off the coast of Incheon, and build the world’s largest ubiquitous technological city.  With a projected cost of $40 to 50 billion, the city has an estimated completion date of 2020, and hopes to accommodate up to half a million residents.  The South Korean government is also trying to build the city within a strict green blueprint, which it may or may not meet.

9. King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia

king-abdullah-city
Not only didn’t this city exist in 1960, it barely exists now.  King Abdullah has a grand vision of a city of the future on the Red Sea about an hour away from the Saudi city of Jeddah.  With an estimated cost of $100 billion, building a state-of-the-art city costs a great deal of money.  It is hard to pin down the number of people who currently reside in the city, as we only hear vague estimates, like how the city should house 2 million in 2020, when it is completed.  What is known for sure is that there are a lot of workers there, building a lot of shiny objects.

8. Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

iqaluit
In 1971, Frobisher Bay was officially declared a settlement in the Northwest Territories of Canada.  Just south of the Arctic Circle, about 2,000 people braved the elements on the southern coast of Baffin Island.  The native Inuit wanted a territory all of their own and, in 1999, officially split from the Northwest Territories and became the territory of Nunavut.  Two years later, Iqaluit was officially designated as a city, specifically the capital of the new territory.  In the past 10 years, the population has “spiked” to nearly 7,000 residents.  Despite its small population, Iqaluit is a capital that governs over 750,000 square miles of territory, an area larger than the state of Alaska.

7. Sandouping, China

Sandouping
The area around Sandouping was known as Huangniupu village until 1984.  The Chinese government created the city to house the 40,000 workers who would build the Three Gorges Dam, the largest electricity generating plant on Earth.  Just a few miles up the river is the city of Chongqing, with a population of nearly 30 million.  So basically the Chinese built a new city, to house a dam, to supply electricity to a nearby megapolis.  Talk about a logistical nightmare.  35,000 residents still call Sandouping home.

6. Putrajaya, Malaysia

putrajaya

Kuala Lumpur is the federal capital of Malaysia, with a population of just over 1.5 million.  But due to overcrowding, the government felt the need to build a brand new city to serve as the country’s federal administrative center.  About 15 minutes south of Kuala Lumpur, the government built the planned city of Putrajaya. Established in 1995, the population has already ballooned to over 65,000, with a state-of-the-art transportation system linking it to Kuala Lumpur.

5. Astana, Kazakhstan

astana
Kazakhstan declared independence out of the ashes of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Flush with oil money, the government took only four years to decide it wanted to move the capital from the largest city of Almaty, to the historical city of Tselinograd, which was renamed Astana.  Formally incorporated in 1961, Tselinograd has had a lot of people living there throughout the century, but not always on their own accord; it was once home to one of the most notorious Gulags in the old Soviet Union.
Since Astana was named the capital of Kazakhstan, the population has soared from 250,000 to 700,000, and the skyline has changed from dreary cold war gray to that of a modern metropolis.

4. Abuja, Nigeria

abuja
Nigeria declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1960 and, for the next decade, war plagued the country. By the 70′s, multiple factions from across cultural divides decided that the country needed a brand new capital in the center of Nigeria, free from the history of bloodshed.  With the discovery of oil, money began to flow into the African nation; construction lasted for over 10 years on Nigeria’s vision of the future.  In 1991, Abuja was finished and named the new capital.  In just over 20 years, the population of Abuja has skyrocketed to nearly a million (about 3 million in the metro area,) as Nigeria zoomed up to the 7th most populous nation in the world.  Some population experts expect Nigeria to be the 3rd largest nation by 2050.

3. Doha, Qatar

Doha
Qatar declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1971.  Large oil and gas reserves poured billions of dollars into the new economy, so much so that Forbes Magazine quickly named Qatar the world’s richest nation.  Doha was named its own municipality in 1963, and has since grown in size and now houses a million residents.
The city is so powerful that they managed to *cough* convince the corrupt weasels at FIFA to award them the 2022 World Cup, despite being located in a desert, with the average high temperature being over 100 degrees Fahrenheit from May until September.  Not really a friendly environment for high-level soccer.

2. Navi Mumbai, India

navi_mumbai
The city of Mumbai, formally Bombay, has a population of over 12 million.  Mumbai grew and grew until it reached its physical limits in 1972, being on an island just off of the Indian coast.  Navi Mumbai was then developed on the mainland, just across from Mumbai. Navi Mumbai is the largest planned community in the world.  In 40 years, with the express purpose of de-congesting Mumbai, the population has grown exponentially, to the point where Navi Mumbai is now the home of 1.2 million residents, and continues to expand further and further inland.

1. Dubai, United Arab Emirates

In 1971, Dubai declared independence from the United Kingdom, and was part of the group that formed the United Arab Emirates. Oil was discovered in the region, and the riches it provided would change the geographic view of the area forever.  In a period of 40 years, the population swelled from a few thousand to over 1.5 million residents.  More radically, the city began building man-made islands, with land reclaimed from the Persian Gulf.  So over the past 15 years, the city has continued to grow across land that was created after the year 2000.  The Palm Islands are modern wonders, challenged only by the planned islands that are currently in limbo, due to Dubai’s current credit issues.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Best Car Racing Games to Play in 2011

10. Wheelman                                This game is seriously awesome! The player you have in this game is Vin Diesel. The game is about dropping people off and picking them up when cops are after you. You will love it. It has brought some cool features in it like when you play the game at high speed; it becomes a lot of fun. You play the game and you feel like you have the SUPERHUMAN driving abilities. It can be played on Xbox 360, PSP, PS3, PC, DS and Dreamcast. 9. Dirt 2 Seriously you’ll love playing this game, it can be played on PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360. This one is for the hardcore rally racing fans. A good racing game to be played in 2011. 8. Need for Speed Shift This one is more like Pro Street but better than that too because of the awesome graphics. It can be played on PC (if you have top graphics card), PSP, PS3 and Xbox 360. 7. Gran Turismo 5 Gran T...

10 Things Successful Entrepreneurs Don't Do (Themselves!)

Time is a entrepreneur's most valuable commodity. Yet one of the biggest problems for small businesses and startups is that the founders are wasting their time trying to do it all. We euphemistically say we “wear lots of hats” but the truth is that entrepreneurs are often trying to save money by doing it all themselves. This can be a huge mistake. There are some things that are better done by professional and are better delegated or outsourced. Whatever your area of expertise, it isn’t the 15 other things you’re trying to manage every day. Plus, the burden of having to do all kinds of additional tasks takes you away from doing what you’re best at. Maybe that’s big ideas, sales, or producing a product, and those are all things that directly contribute to the company’s bottom line. Plus, these days the “gig” economy means that you don’t have to bring on a full-time employee to get the job done. Maybe you don’t have enough tasks to employ a bookkeeper or accountant full time, ...

Top 10 Most Luxurious Hotels in the World

1. Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi     Costing approximately $3 billion to build, Emirates Palace has 394 rooms and suites, 40 meeting and conference rooms, a white sand beach, a myriad of pools and fountains, a sumptuous spa, marble imported from 13 different countries and over 1,000 crystal chandeliers. It’s like a small pleasure fortress that also boasts the most prestigious marina development in the Middle East. Royalty, or those who want to feel like it, can luxuriate in one of the many palace suites, all with lavish surroundings that would befit a Sultan of old yet with enough modern amenities to please today’s top tycoons.   2. Mardan Palace Hotel, Turkey     Built by Russian Billionaire Telman Ismailov in 2009 to the tune of $1.65 billion, the Mardan Palace Hotel in Antalya, Turkey boasts the largest swimming pool in the Mediterranean (fits 1,000 guests) and is touted as one of the most elite luxury hotels in Eu...