There’s Eko Atlantic, a “new Dubai” taking shape on reclaimed land off the coast of Nigeria, and Forest City, a “new Singapore” being built just over the Johor Strait from the original. There’s the New Silk Road city of Khorgos rising from the barren steppe that separates Kazakhstan and China, the “sustainable city” of Neom in Saudi Arabia, the Norman Foster-designed Masdar in Abu Dhabi, a few in Latin America … and even a Robotic New City in Malaysia.

“We’re in the midst of new cities fever,” says Prof Sarah Moser. The head of the new cities lab at McGill University has documented more than 100 cities that have sprung up across Asia and Africa since the early 2000s for her forthcoming Atlas of New Cities.

Moser says the money to be made is staggering – measured in the trillions of dollars. “It’s extremely lucrative,” she adds. “There are real estate and tech companies circling like sharks.”

“It’s easy for leaders to whip up some nationalist frenzy and sell the new city as a source of national pride. The computer-generated models look beautiful too – all the old city problems are just gone – and it looks magically real. It’s compelling for people who live in overcrowded and polluted places.”

Most are in places where rapid urbanisation and population growth have overwhelmed existing cities. Sometimes masterplanned cities are a way for countries in the global south to kickstart an economic transition out of agriculture or from resource-based economies. They can also allow governments to write their country’s image afresh. “That’s a very seductive idea, especially in countries that were colonised,” says Moser.

Ordos, China

Officials in coal-rich Inner Mongolia announced plans for a city of 1 million people in the parched desert and grasslands south of Ordos Dongsheng in 2003. Six years later the part-built development of Ordos Kangbashi became notorious around the world as a “ghost city”, as news reports highlighted the lack of people, aroundabout 30,000 at the time. Images showed a vast central public space – almost the size of Tiananmen Square in Beijing – and rows of identical empty apartment blocks. There are signs the city has started to fill up. A 2017 report from the state-run Xinhua news agency claimed a permanent population of 153,000, with almost 5,000 active businesses. Wade Shepard, author of The Ghost Cities of China, believes that by the city’s expected completion date of 2023 it should have met its revised population target of 300,000 people. “It regularly takes western cities five to 10 years to build civil engineering projects such as new subway lines,” he points out. “Ordos Kangbashi probably should have impressed the world with its rapid pace of development.”

Putrajaya, Malaysia

The former prime minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad announced plans in the late 1980s to shift the nation’s administrative capital from congested, overcrowded Kuala Lumpur to a new city built on former oil and rubber plantations 25 miles (40km) to the south. Putrajaya would join the ranks of purpose-built capitals around the world: from Canberra in Australia to Islamabad in Pakistan, Abuja in Nigeria to Washington DC in the US. Construction began in the mid-1990s. Putrajaya was billed as an “intelligent garden city”: more than a third of the land is reserved for green spaces, with 200 hectares (494 acres) of wetlands and a 400-hectare manmade lake – as well as the world’s largest roundabout. Although the Asian financial crisis of 1997 put a temporary halt on development, the city is now fully functioning: almost all government departments have moved there, along with an estimated population of 88,000. It has been praised for its innovative architecture, community and environmental focus; a “manicured Malaysia” of office blocks, hotels and pretty parks.

New Cairo, Egypt

The city of New Cairo – in the desert 20 miles to the east of its namesake – was conceived in the late 1990s and established by presidential decree in 2000. Not to be confused with the as-yet-unnamed new administrative capital proposed by president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in 2014 (another 20 miles east and dubbed the “new New Cairo”), the original New Cairo was meant to attract a population of 5 million. A few hundred-thousand currently call it home.

Songdo, South Korea

Where Ordos and New Cairo rose from the desert and Putrajaya from the jungle, the new city of Songdo was built on land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea. Songdo International Business District was envisioned as a sustainable, low-carbon, hi-tech “ubiquitous city” – with all the advantages of Seoul, 30 miles to the north, but without the congestion and air pollution. All major buildings are constructed to LEED green standards; a network of underground tubes sucks all household and office waste to processing facilities, eliminating the need for rubbish trucks; residents can remotely control lighting and air conditioning, while street sensors monitor traffic flow. Many of those futuristic features, though, are starting to look a little commonplace. Master-planned by New York architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, Songdo is the world’s most expensive private real estate development. As of last year, the population was estimated at just over 100,000 people – around a third of its target. The 2015 completion date has been pushed back to 2022.

All satellite imagery sourced from Google Earth Engine