Baku White City: The Project Status, and Why the Sources Disagree

The project known as Baku White City is one of the largest urban undertakings in Azerbaijan's capital: the remediation of an industrial and oil-worked area known for generations as the Black City. Anyone examining property there runs quickly into a problem that lies not in the project but in its documentation — the sources do not agree on whether it is finished or still under construction, and the discrepancies in the figures are too large to wave away. This page sets out what can be verified, and what cannot.

What the Project Is, Briefly

The Black City was Baku's industrial and oil district, contaminated after more than a century of activity. The project replaces it with a mixed-use district: residential, commercial, cultural, recreational and public space. The design is credited to Atkins and to Foster and Partners, and Pasha Construction, part of Pasha Holding, has built there; Pasha Holding is described as one of the developers and a heavy investor.

What Can Be Verified

• Establishment: 24 December 2011, which is also when the opening ceremony was held.
• Planned scale: roughly 19,700 homes for around 50,000 residents, with about 75% of the space residential. Commercial and leisure space is planned to support up to 48,000 jobs.
• Activity in 2026: in September 2026 the chairman of the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture presented the project at the 2nd Azerbaijan International Investment Forum as an example of industrial-site remediation, describing it in the present tense — an area that is being transformed. In May 2026 an agreement was signed between the project and Pasha Development for the joint development of several facilities in the Coastal District.

The Contradiction Worth Knowing About

The encyclopaedic entry on the project states in its development section that it "was completed in 2022." That same entry contradicts the claim: a metro station within it is described as under construction, work in the Central Park area is described as ongoing, and the entry sits in the category "Buildings and structures under construction in Baku." The entry does not reconcile this.

The 2026 reporting points the other way: a new development agreement in May and an official presentation in September in the present tense do not sit easily with a project that finished four years earlier.

The reasonable reading is that this is a multi-phase project in which some phases are complete and others are not, and that "completed" refers to a phase rather than the whole. But that is a reading, not a verified fact, and we do not present it as one.

The Figures Do Not Reconcile Either

Figure	What is reported
Area	6.21 km² in the infobox; 221 hectares (about 2.21 km²) in the body text, for the redeveloped portion of the Black City
Planned residents	50,000
Planned jobs	up to 48,000

The area discrepancy is nearly threefold. The plausible explanation is that the two numbers measure different things — the whole against the redeveloped portion — but the source does not say so, and so the gap is presented here as it stands.

Figures we encountered and did not use: a search also surfaced 91 buildings completed, 280,000 residents and 240,000 jobs. We could not verify any of these against a source, and they are more than five times the figures that are verified. They therefore do not appear here as data.

What This Means for a Buyer

This is an area under construction, not a finished one. Even on the most generous reading, parts of the project are incomplete, transport infrastructure included. Buying here means buying into surroundings that will change around you — favourably if the plan is realised, but with uncertainty about timing.

The right question is not "is the project complete" but "is my specific quarter complete." In a multi-phase project at this scale, the distance between a finished phase and one that has not started can be a few hundred metres.

The developer is a material fact. The involvement of Pasha Holding and Pasha Development signals financial depth, but signing a development agreement for the Coastal District in 2026 also says that this quarter is near the start of its life rather than the end.

So timing is the decision. An urban project declared complete in one source and documented as building in another is precisely the case where a contractual handover date, with a defined grace period and compensation, is worth more than any presentation. Anyone comparing a price here against an established district can start with the price index and see per-square-metre ranges by area.

How to Check the Status Yourself

1. Visit the site. Cranes and active construction are visible, and they are the most reliable source on status.
2. Ask which stage the date refers to — structural completion, municipal approval, key handover and title registration are four different moments.
3. Check the metro station. Transport infrastructure is a good gauge of the stage a whole quarter has reached.
4. Cross-read official announcements by date — a 2026 statement outranks an entry that has not been updated.

Sources

• Baku White City — Wikipedia. Source for the area, the establishment date, the planned scale of homes, residents and jobs, the identity of the designers, and also for the internal contradiction between "completed in 2022" and components described as under construction.
• Anar Guliyev: Baku White City project creates new opportunities for urban development, investment — Report.az, 26 September 2026. The presentation of the project at the 2nd Azerbaijan International Investment Forum, in the present tense. The article gives no figure for area, buildings, residents or timeline.
• Baku White City, Pasha Development sign agreement to develop Coastal District — Trend.az, May 2026. The agreement for joint development of facilities in the Coastal District.

Checked and verified on 23 October 2026. The status of a multi-phase project changes, and it should be verified with the developer or a local lawyer before any decision.

Summary

Baku White City is a real project at real scale, with recognised designers and a developer of financial depth. But it is also a case study in scale not amounting to certainty: one source says it was completed in 2022, 2026 sources describe continuing construction and fresh development agreements, and the figure for the project's area ranges from 221 hectares to 6.21 km². We do not smooth those gaps into a single number, because the gap is itself the information: it tells a buyer that the question is not about the project but about the quarter, the phase, and what the contract says.

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• Price per square metre by district in Baku
• A checklist for choosing a developer in Baku
• A guide to tracking the Baku property market