Why Half of this Country Lives on One Tiny Island

why is there such a massive City on this tiny island in the middle of the ocean I thought small ISS were supposed to be deserted the place you go to mine Bird poo or dump your garbage but this island Malay has a population of about 210,000 with some estimates going up to 250,000 and look at it it's the world's densest Island well denses if you ignore islands with only a couple hundred or thousand people living on them and those that don't actually act like Islands these don't act like Islands you can literally drive to them if we're talking about large builtup wellestablished islands that actually act like Islands AKA only accessible by boat or plane then Malay is our winner the city itself holds around 109,000 people for every square kilometer or around 9 square m for every person that's only this much space which also makes it the most dense city on Earth at least according to Wikipedia's outdated numbers and little fun fact about the city it's the capital of the malds a country made completely of these small flat ring-shaped islands called a TOS in the middle of the Indian Ocean ranging from large rural islands with tons of nature to tourist traps to uninhabited jungles to incredibly dense steelb built mazes that's the malds for you but where is Malay and all of these islands I'll give you a second to guess maybe it's this one yeah this one looks nice and big nope Malay is this tiny one right here with a length of 1. 9x 1. 2 km it is not large at all quite the opposite here's Malay compared to Monaco and to Central Park and to Singapore looks like an ant and yet it holds over 40% of the nation's population but in the 1920s the city had only around 5,000 residents a much more appropriate amount for its size in 2000 only a quarter of maldivians lived in the capital not nearly half so people have been been living in Malay for over a thousand years but it's never been this massive why the sudden boom to become the most dominant island in the country and the densest city on earth well I have a two-part Theory one part is the things the city has and the second is just sheer coincidence let's take a little tour of the city a street view and top down tour of the city at least along the incredibly packed streets and layers of buildings you'll find most things a normal city has shops restaurants houses parks seage that dumps waste into the ocean and a desalination plant for clean water okay maybe those last two are a little more reminiscent of Dubai than an average city but what makes Malay so special is what it has that the rest of the country doesn't things we all think are essential the two largest hospitals in the country the largest airport in fact with the largest SE plane operation on Earth the largest university in the Maldives the largest port shipping operation and Fish Market the oldest and largest mosques and dis despite the beautiful image of the country surprisingly bad beaches oh and yeah the government too the government is in Malay why did they pick this island well honestly just because the old Sultans called This Island home and when medieval Islamic Traders came to the Maldives this island is where they built the first mosques in the country like the Friday mosque that's what I'm talking about with coincidence the island built all of this infrastructure because it's where the government was seated for centuries infrastructure that connects the islands to each other in the outside world to let people get the vital Imports they need like food Fuel and almost everything it's where people work if you work in the government or tourism industry or shipping fishing Healthcare education there's a good chance you live in Malay considering this is the bulk of what maldivians do there's a good chance a lot of them live in Malay just because the things are here it's what a buildup of political and economic momentum can do but what about the other Islands there's plenty of space on them to escape this cement jungle the Maldives has over 1,000 Islands in this long downward shape but only around 190 of them are inhabited these islands are then grouped into 20 at TOS made up of multiple islands and then four cities each on only one Island since 2010 there have been elected City councils at to councils and even Island councils I bet the bid for elections just who has more friends when your island is only a couple hundred people large that's the thing with these islands they can get really small or really large well only one is really large Raku has only around 80 people but hitu has over 10,000 the most populous island outside of Malay yet most still only have zero Islands full of jungle Beauty bananas papayas and noni fruit which reminds me agriculture in the males is dismal although 10% of the land is dedicated to Farms most are small and on Tiny distant Island ISS fishing does help but in order to get enough calories for the country the Maldives is forced to import their food especially rice and so the population of these islands are very vulnerable to the outside world it's why there are no tariffs on food Fuel and fertilizers despite tariffs making up a pretty substantial part of the government's Revenue so those on the atols who are generally much younger live at much more risk and a lower standard of living than the older workers in Malay if you could call this a lower standard of living than this the Maldives also has a significant foreign worker population nearly all male temporary workers with many living in Malay and in Resorts that's right living inside the resorts what a nice life that must be blue water white sand perfect temperatures just kidding they're the workers I'm sure it's a lot less enjoyable for them these resorts are probably the reason you've even heard of the malds in the first place either because you dream of going to them or just sick of hearing your cooworker workers talking about their Maldives holiday it's not a surprise then that tourism is one of the country's largest Industries let's put this into perspective if you look up their imports and exports in 2021 they import about $2.

8 billion of goods while exporting only $240 million most of that being fish but if you add services with the goods they import 3. 6 billion and Export over 4 billion that's over a 16 times in increase when adding services to their exports why because tourism is an export it gives a service to a foreign customer and in exchange they give you foreign money around $3. 5 billion of foreign receipts in 2021 alone a third of their GDP comes from tourism as well as 60% of the foreign exchange they need to buy necessary Imports but unlike a normal export the more tourism you give to foreigners the more you need to build up your home country having received over 2 million tourists before Co that means there were four visitors for every resident does it get crowded and not really except for Malay though that's the whole point of this video this is because they have a one Island one Resort policy creating a sense of luxury tourism away from civilization when tourists come they don't go to the cities they go to random islands in the outskirts to drink bellinis in their bikinis and with over 1,000 uninhabited islands to expand to they still have plenty of room to grow so since the' 70s both the government and private businesses have invested heavily into this industry in terms of PB Private Business most of it comes from China India and Singapore in the form of infrastructure you know Resorts hotels ports harbors and the China Maldives friendship Bridge because they're so dependent on this they essentially have free investment and free flow of capital in and out of the country they're in the South Asian free trade agreement and have free trade with China so it's not uncommon for a resort to be owned by singaporeans staffed by Indians and sold to Rich Chinese tourists but it's not free free investment there are costs costs called confusing rules unclear laws competition with politically connected businessmen corruption and the fact that foreigners cannot own land only lease it from the government for 50 years if you want this put in a different way that's a little more real the country has had three coup attempts in the80s three presid residents have been arrested after their time in office and the government is just generally corrupt and autocratic maybe even a little repressive one might say so because of the confusion the Maldives ranks in the bottom 20 countries on the economic freedom index and the bottom 50 on the ease of doing business index the other investor doesn't care about these though it's the government they've invested heavily into banking shipping Communications electricity Fisheries canning factories and of course tourism since the 70s the most important are these two tourism and shipping arguably what turn the Maldives into an upper middle inome economy it is today these didn't just transform the people they transformed the government 34 of government tax revenue comes from either tariffs consumption taxes or biggest of all a tourism tax so when Co hit and people stayed home planing Animal Crossing instead of traveling across the world and ships stopped shipping that hit the Maldives incredibly hard not only were thousands of people laid off when their major industries were severed but government revenue was cut by 35% because it came mainly through these industries they had to spend more with less money especially to those in the rural atols most dependent on government services and subsidies so the debt doubled from 2019 to 2022 not a great Stitch to be in but hey that's the Maldives how does this relate to Mal's population density though well more tourism and shipping means more government revenue more Revenue means more development and Central Administration more Administration means more bureaucrats and boom more bureaucrats on the capital Island means Malay becomes even denser because the Maldives developed into a decently Rich Nation it meant the central Capital developed more and built up to their city limits through bureaucracy and yet corruption or debt isn't even the greatest issue in the Mal Dives there's one other issue that might give us a glimpse into their future especially into mala's future hint it's more density that problem is water both too much of it and too little the Maldives is one of the lowest countries on Earth their highest point is right here some random Hill on a golf course standing at a proud 5.