Creating a city from scratch is no easy task, but one Chinese company could be banking billions that a so-called "Forest City"— a new high-tech, eco-friendly city covered head to toe in trees and shrubs — is the wave of the future.

So far, the development firm Country Garden Holdings has sunk $534 million into Forest City, which will be built on a chain of four reclaimed islands between Singapore and Malaysia. The money has primarily gone toward anchoring the islands into the surrounding Indian Ocean so architects can build high-rises without worrying about collapse, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Forest City would potentially be home to more than 700,000 people living along nearly 20 miles of coastline. Each building's roof would be able to collect and divert stormwater for storage or purification — a feature found in many Singaporean buildings already.

If the project reaches completion (at a future date that's still undetermined) the total cost will likely exceed $40 billion.

Beneath towering skyscrapers whose facades are lined with rows of plants, Forest City will contain a dense network of underground tunnels to keep the ground-level sidewalks open for pedestrians.

Forest City would be the first city of its kind, both in its technology and premise, but not the first to introduce plant-lined buildings. It has several predecessors, in fact, including the dual tree-covered skyscrapers in Milan known as Bosco Verticale ("vertical forest").

That design won second place in the 2015 Emporis Skyscraper Awards.

There's also the Tower of the Cedars, in Switzerland, which will begin construction in 2017.

It'll feature 24,000 plants on all sides of the 384-foot tower, including 6,000 shrubs and 18,000 perennials, when completed.

The closest relative Forest City has is the Green Heart in Singapore, an apartment complex whose floors and main atrium are an enormous ode to nature. Construction began in 2012.

There are reflecting pools, hanging gardens, walkways, and waterfalls.

Like these other green-minded buildings, Forest City would be focused on using sustainable energy sources like wind and solar power rather than coal and natural gas.

Cars would be parked underground to keep the main streets cleaner and quieter.

Whether a project as large as Forest City manages to get off the ground is up in the air, but its instincts seem to be pointed in the right direction.

The only way to manage a growing trend of urbanization and greenhouse gas emissions may be a radical rethinking of how society structures itself.

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