If You Build It, They Won't Necessarily Come - Maldives' Newest Island Stands Largely Vacant

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Many residents of Male say the idea of Hulhumale is a good one given the atrocious conditions in the capital. It has more than 100,000 people in a space that can be crossed on foot in 25 minutes. Rents for two-bedroom apartments top $9000 a year, despite annual per capita incomes of $4000. Imported sports cars jam the narrow streets, even though it's rarely possible to drive faster than 30km per hour. Global warming, meanwhile, has many people fearful that the low-lying city will be swamped by rising tides in a matter of years.

Problem is, many people don't want to leave. Down a narrow alley off Narrow Land Street on Male, 61-year-old Abdul Aziz and nine other relatives live in a 68sqm dwelling with corrugated tin roofs. A discarded toilet tank and cement buckets litter the space outside his door. "I want to stay here - it's the capital city," he says. Besides, with Hulhumale, "people are just being shifted from one island to another - it's not a long-term solution".

Mohamed Ishan Saeed, an architect who helped design some of Hulhumale's apartment blocks, also has turned against the project, especially after disagreeing with the island's administrators over design elements. Today, he describes the idea of engineering a whole new town as "moronic" and refers to Hulhumale's hulking apartment blocks as "a prison" because they don't have enough community space. When he thinks of the island, he says, "it's just kind of sick, because it's like, 'what the hell is this'?" Still, even Shujau, the government's administrator of the projects, seems discouraged. He studied in Australia before returning to the Maldives to help solve its infrastructure issues. "It was good fun" at first, he says. But now, "our honeymoon period is over". The Government is now short of funds for construction. It used up loads of cash - including much of a $US30million ($33.5 million) development package - to help residents buy the first apartments and now must wait for people to repay their loans, which could take 20 years or more. "For us, that's a lot of money," Shujau says.

Even if Hulhumale fulfills its planners' ambitions, it's unclear how long it will survive. Although it is being built on higher ground to outlast Male as the tides rise, it too, is vulnerable. Shujau says that if worst-case scenarios come to pass, Hulhumale itself could be submerged by 2050.

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23038807-23850,00.html