Three years ago, the CEO of the Broad Group, announced plans to build the world's tallest building in which people would be able to find everything they need "except a crematorium." Though he said it would be finished within a year, almost three years later the project has barely started and its fate is uncertain.

The Broad Group's Sky City project remains shrouded in mystery with only a cornerstone lying on the grass on October 18, 2014 in Changsha, Hunan Province. Photo: CFP

Three years ago, Zhang Yue aimed to take the title of "world's tallest building" away from Dubai's Burj Khalifa by building an 838-meter high skyscraper in Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province.

Today, the only residents are fish swimming in the pit dug for the foundations.

"Sky City" won worldwide attention when Zhang, CEO of the Broad Group, said that it would be completed within just seven months. In comparison, it took more than five years to build the Burj Khalifa.

Zhang says Sky City will have everything people need from kindergartens to hotels and restaurants, will save space and provide an alternative eco-friendly lifestyle to Changsha residents.

But so far it only exists on blueprints and in Zhang's imagination. Is it a utopia or a castle in the air?

Sky City still exists only on paper as of today. Photo: Seen on Baidu.com

Welcome to Sky City



"Except a crematorium, it has everything you need," said Zhang.

According to plans, the skyscraper will be built on 100.95 mu (6.73 hectares) of land which used to be paddy fields. The building is planned to be 838 meters high, 10 meters higher than the Burj Khalifa. The Broad Group spent 389.77 million yuan ($58.31 million) to acquire the land.

The building will supposedly be equipped with the most advanced air purifiers available and be able to provide fresh organic produce to its 30,000 residents - all grown in its 130-mu farm 80 stories up.

With Sky City's 93 elevators, it will apparently only take residents about a minute to get from their luxury suite on the 170th floor to the kindergarten on the fifth floor, and even less than that to get from the cafe on floor 202 to the forest park on floor 100. If you'd rather walk, the skyscraper is designed to have a 10-kilometer walkway leading from the first floor all the way up to floor 170. 

As a huge variety of services will be provided in one building, the company says people will abandon their cars and save time on travel.

Zhang was awarded the United Nations Environment Program's Champions of the Earth title back in 2011 because of his achievements in environmental protection.

"This will be the place human beings yearn to be," Zhang said at the groundbreaking ceremony after disembarking from his private helicopter.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the Sky City project is held on July 20, 2013 in Changsha. Photo: CFP

Stalled skyscraper



Three years after his headline-grabbing speech, progress on the most yearned-after place has stalled.

"We will definitely build Sky City," Zhu Linfang, a spokesperson for the Broad Group, told China Youth Daily. But she refused to reveal what is currently going on with the project.

"More than three years have passed. Why are you still paying attention to it?" she asked instead.

Wang Guisheng, a farmer in his 80s, still remembers clearly that on the night of the groundbreaking ceremony, the construction site was lit up and his home near the site was as bright as day. Several days later, the workers dug a deep pit on farmland he had once cultivated.

According to Wang, the pit is deeper than his 16.9-meter three-story house family home. 

But construction work did not go on for long. According to media reports at the time, progress on Sky City was soon suspended because the Broad Group started without getting approval from the city government.

Zhang announced several days after the ceremony that they "haven't begun construction. We just started digging."

So far, neither the local government nor the company is willing to explain what is now happening with the ambitious project. There is no information about its progress on the company's official website.

The only information about Sky City that can be found on one of its websites is a press release stating that the company aims to build a 202-story building and the plan "passed the examination by the Chinese government on April 1, 2014." It adds that the project will "overthrow the traditional architectural mode," and be environmentally sustainable.

The Wangcheng district government answered a question about this "exam" on its official website in May 2015, saying that Sky City's design has passed anti-seismic inspections.

However, other exams including fire prevention are still ongoing according to the answer.

"It will kick off after all the designs are completed and pass the exams," read the reply.

However, based on information that China Youth Daily has collected from different government bureaus, the Sky City design has not passed any official examinations so far.

According to Chinese law, construction cannot begin if a building's plans haven't passed an environmental impact assessment. The Changsha Environment Protection Agency told the China Youth Daily that so far they haven't received an environmental assessment report from the Broad Group.

A worker at Hunan University's environmental assessment center, which was responsible for writing the report on Sky City, said that their work has been called off by the Broad Group.

Ren Guliang, deputy director of the Binshui Xincheng neighborhood management committee which supervises the Sky City project, said that they are worrying about the fact that the land is idle but they still haven't received approval for work to begin again.

Ren claims that Sky City was suspended by the city government. He said that it's unclear why they halted the work, but the project is still planned to go ahead at some point.

Chinese law stipulates that developers who leave land idle for one year or more can be charged an "idle land fee." If land is idle for two years, it can be taken back by the government without compensation. The exceptions are if a construction program is delayed because of unavoidable reasons or because there are ongoing governmental inspections.

A worker at the Wangcheng Bureau of Land and Resources told the media that the Broad Group still has land use rights for the Sky City site. Another official with the bureau explained that "you should not only look at the two-year term. There are both company's reasons and the government's reasons in this project."

Amid skepticism



The Broad Group has boasted that they will use advanced technology to build Sky City faster than any building that size has ever been built. According to the company, some 20,000 workers will spend four months putting together thousands of prefabricated steel-and-concrete blocks at their factory, and then those blocks will be transported to the site. About 3,000 workers will take three months to assemble those blocks like Lego. After this, workers will only need to finish the internal decorations.

When Sky City was unveiled, Yin Zhi, a professor of the Tsinghua University's School of Architecture, said that it is "either a marvel or a hoax."

Facing criticism, Zhang complained that they have good intentions but have incurred unfair criticism and skepticism anyway. 

Wei Chunyu, director of Hunan University's architecture department, said that he appreciates Zhang's courage and gave credit to the building technique. But he said his main doubts are about the building's height.

Wei said that Sky City is meaningful in exploring how to efficiently use the land, and a new city lifestyle, but this "has nothing to do with building the world's tallest building."

The building's extraordinary height will bring a series of unpredictable safety problems to residents, Wei noted.

He said that in such a tall building, "people living upstairs will not have the chance to escape [in case of fire] through jumping. They have to depend on vertical transportation. But if an emergency happens, how can so many people be evacuated? Anything dropping from 800 meters above the ground can become a bomb. Human beings and trash are the same," he said.

Besides safety concerns, environmentalist Zhou Canying has pointed out that "eco-friendly" Sky City is being built right next to a protected wetland.

Broad Group staff told China Youth Daily that they didn't know that they're building by the Dazehui wetland and promised they will protect it.

Wang Guisheng, the farmer who lives next to the site, had his life totally changed by the project when his farmland was taken away from him by the project.

But now construction has stalled, he is wondering whether he can take back his farmland.

As he has already been paid compensation, his request was turned down. But he still grows some vegetables including eggplants, pumpkins and chilies on the Sky City site.

"Just wait and see. It's still unknown whether the building will be constructed before my death," he said.