Travel and Leisure reports on Putrajaya, a Malaysian “$5 billion-plus city of the future.”

Author Karrie Jacobs notes that “the urban renewal bug that infected the Europeans and the Americans in the 20th century has been passed along to the Asians,” and is visible in China, Hong Kong, Korea, and elsewhere.

Americans and Europeans seem to have learned that they don’t want to live in the gleaming techno-city of the future, but Asians still believe in modernity. It may be up to them to build the cities of science fiction—but rising social freedom and popular input may put a stop to them in Asia as well.