At the Mayors’ Forum held as part of the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the management of a city that seemed to have arrived from the future—or rather, had come to life on paper—astonished the audience.

During the forum, mayors discussed challenges common to densely populated urban areas, including ecosystem degradation caused by overconcentration and unequal access to green infrastructure, while searching for practical solutions. Against this backdrop, the city’s “mayor” appeared to speak from an entirely different reality. “We Mongolians need to stop viewing urban land through the narrow lens of profit and start seeing it as a responsibility. Going forward, we will establish a system of accountability for investing in urban land,” the mayor declared.

The promises did not stop there. The official went on to say that mortgages would be provided to people who settle in the city in the future and that those who had previously participated in subsidised housing programmes would also be considered. It is difficult to imagine what impression the foreign delegates, businesspeople and investors who have been introduced to the city’s development plans, designs and vision in recent days will take home with them. What is even more troubling is that the city appears to have “flourished” primarily in the imagination of its officials. For Mongolians who have watched the project unfold from its inception, seeing it presented to international representatives with such confidence is enough to leave one wondering whether to laugh or cry. Some have even gone so far as to say they can only hope that as few people as possible hear the “dream plans” of Mongolian officials.

By now, readers may already have guessed which city is being discussed. For nearly 15 years, Mongolia has talked about developing a new city in the Khushig Valley, centred around Chinggis Khaan International Airport in the territory of Altanbulag and Sergelen soums of Tuv Province. It has been about six years since official resolutions and decisions were adopted to move the project forward. Yet, at present, there is little to show for it beyond a collection of officials, several stretches of utility pipelines and the foundations of a few infrastructure facilities.

Against this backdrop, presenting the project to international delegates as a flagship initiative and as a “model city for green, smart and sustainable development” is, frankly, embarrassing. In recent months, Ulaanbaatar authorities have increasingly released information suggesting that the Hunnu City project is progressing rapidly and is almost ready to receive residents. As recently as August 10, officials from the Capital City’s Integrated Project Management Office stated that construction of the Sergelen substation in Hunnu City had reached 95 percent completion and that the main work to establish a reliable electricity supply was nearing completion.

They added that the rapid progress of basic urban infrastructure would provide the foundation for the phased construction of buildings and facilities, housing, government complexes, educational institutions and service centres. During COP17, officials responsible for the city’s development also announced ambitious plans to relocate all of Ulaanbaatar’s transportation and logistics operations to Hunnu City and establish an airport, schools and kindergartens there, claiming that the project would eventually create approximately 80,000 jobs. They further stated that more than 2,000 jobs had already been created.

Yet, on the ground, even the detailed designs for the secondary utility networks required for the new city have reportedly not been completed. Although the capital administration has been issuing statements suggesting that the basic engineering infrastructure has been put in order, the detailed designs for the full networks for clean water, wastewater, heating, telecommunications and electricity are reportedly still incomplete. In other words, the construction of the city remains, in large part, a plan on paper against a vast expanse of empty land.

And yet officials and executives continue to speak grandly about mortgages, economic free zones, green urban development, land management and smart investment—as though these ambitions were already within reach. At this point, such rhetoric risks becoming less a vision for the future than a source of confusion for the public.

The problem is not that Mongolia should not dream of a new city. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with presenting an ambitious vision to the international community. The problem is the growing gap between the city that officials describe and the city that actually exists.

A genuinely green, smart and sustainable city cannot be built through slogans, conceptual drawings and promises alone. It requires completed designs, functioning infrastructure, transparent financing, accountable institutions and, above all, tangible progress on the ground. Until those foundations are in place, Hunnu City remains far closer to a city on paper than the future metropolis its officials are presenting to the world.

There are several reasons why the public remains unconvinced by the plans and decisions surrounding the construction of a new city in the Khushig Valley. First, Mongolia has a limited track record of successfully implementing major infrastructure and development projects, let alone building entirely new urban settlements. Although policy documents have repeatedly envisioned developing outlying districts as satellite cities, authorities have struggled to move beyond discussion and plans. Six years have passed since the decision was made to establish a city around the new international airport, yet much of that time has been spent on presentations rather than actual construction. Despite the lack of tangible progress, enormous amounts of time and public money continue to be spent on promotional activities, including design and planning competitions, revisions to master plans, international forums, conferences and consultations.

Second, officials have appeared more focused on attracting public attention through populist statements and political spectacles that make old ideas look new than on advancing the project itself. The city has already been renamed three times—Aerocity, New Zuunmod and Hunnu—despite the fact that it has yet to be built. Meanwhile, two large state-funded entities, the Governor’s Office and the Hunnu City Development Corporation, have been established to oversee the city, apparently modelled on structures used in more developed countries, and continue to operate on a daily basis at taxpayers’ expense.

The scale of the bureaucracy surrounding the project was on full display at COP17, where four officials from these organisations were participating in the conference. They included the CEO of the Hunnu City Development Corporation, B.Gunbold, the official exercising the functions of governor and serving as plenipotentiary representative, M.Batbayar, chief engineer  D.Jargal and chief architect U.Tserenbazar, all attending the international gathering as representatives of the “city”. 

This alone offers a glimpse into the extensive structures and broad range of “functions” that have been established around the Hunnu City project under government patronage and funding. Perhaps most remarkably, while the project itself has made little visible progress, the number of people involved in its planning and organisation has continued to grow year after year.

For instance, an official serving as a consulting engineer told a conference on desertification that countries around the world are pursuing policies to limit environmental damage and ensure that people can live in healthy and safe environments by building new cities and redeveloping existing ones. He claimed that Hunnu City would follow these internationally recognised principles of urban planning and described the project as Mongolia’s first attempt to address Ulaanbaatar’s pressing urban challenges by drawing on modern requirements, technology and available resources.

Another consulting architect, whose team reportedly won the international competition for Hunnu City’s master plan, offered an equally ambitious vision. He said the city would become a new satellite area of Ulaanbaatar, adding that water was the most important foundation of any city and had therefore been made a central pillar of their design. According to him, the team’s main objective was not to produce a generic master plan for someone else, but to create a development adapted specifically to Mongolia’s conditions.

The Governor’s Office has also announced that Hunnu City is planned according to global urban development trends and the “15-minute city” concept. The idea, officials say, is to create an environmentally friendly green city with accessible, public-transportation-oriented infrastructure and essential government services concentrated within convenient reach of residents.

There is, in fact, no shortage of new announcements about the ambitious vision for Hunnu City. Year after year, the plans and designs for this satellite city, one that exists far more vividly in the imagination of its officials than on the ground, continue to grow increasingly elaborate.

The result is an ever-expanding vision of a futuristic city, while the physical city itself remains largely absent. For the public, this widening gap between what is being designed and what is actually being built is precisely what makes the promises surrounding Hunnu City so difficult to believe.

Published Date:2026-08-26