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2012, was the $5 million Koh Pich City Hall, a tacky mock-classical reception complex
complete with chandeliers, towering stained glass windows, and opera boxes. Hun Sen
has also announced plans to build a skyscraper 554 meters high, an absurd and probably
infeasible prestige megaproject that, if it ever comes to fruition, will be more than four
times taller than the city's next highest building.
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In Elite Town, another of the planned luxury developments on Diamond Island,
wealthy buyers have forked out between $232,000 and $1.08 million for modern town-
houses built on streets named after famous American universities: Stanford, Princeton,
Yale, Harvard. Berkeley Street, the main drag, is lined with bright yellow condominiums,
some half-finished, others with SUVs parked in the driveway. Skinny trees cast small
circles of shade, and lonely dogs scamper across the tarmac. Similar satellite city projects
have sprung up over the past decade. Grand Phnom Penh International City, built from
reclaimed wetlands in the city's north, is a secret garden of gated neoclassical mansions,
shady streets, water fountains, and manicured lawns, which residents enter through what
looks like a replica of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, crowned with rearing bronze stallions.
There's also an 18-hole golf course designed by Nicklaus Design, a firm owned by the
American golfer Jack Nicklaus, where high-ranking officials drive and putt their worries
away. Prime Minister Hun Sen, in true “Dear Leader” style, is said to have shot a number
of holes in one here.
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Seven satellite city projects are scheduled for completion in the next 10 to 15 years,
Penh has also seen a proliferation of mall-style shopping. When the eight-story Sorya
Mall opened its doors in 2003, few of Phnom Penh's residents had seen escalators, let
alone modern shopping centers. In mid-2014, Japanese retail giant Aeon unveiled its
Aeon Mall, Cambodia's first international-standard mega-mall, which included 100,000
square meters of restaurants, luxury boutiques, and cinemas. For the new Cambodian
middle class, living and consuming have moved from the streets to private, air-condi-
tioned interiors. Layors of security guard Phnom Penh's suburban future from the dis-
ordered bustle of the Cambodian street—the honking traffic, wagon vendors, and other
sidewalk businesses that are the source of most of the city's ramshackle charms. In 2005
one city official described the urban ideal as a “city with no smoke and no sound.”
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It's a vision the Phnom Penh Municipality has come a long way in realizing. Over the
past decade most of the city's streets have been sealed and resurfaced. Overgrown public
gardens have been tamed and lined with neat flowerbeds. The riverfront, once a ribbon of
dirt where people sold cans of beer by candlelight, is now a handsome promenade lined
with palms and streetlamps. Just like Bangkok and Jakarta in the 1970s, Phnom Penh is
marching along the path toward a clean, sanitized modernity. “I am so proud that from
bare hands and ghost city we have come this far,” Hun Sen said during the ground-break-
