Beginning in 1653 Sultan Ageng launched agricultural reform, including developing new settlements along the Cisadane River, right on the outskirts of Batavia. Thousands of acres of land were cleared and planted with coconut trees, and around twenty thousand people were transmigrated to the new settlement. The development also included lands along the north coast between Banten and Batavia. An irrigation project was conducted in Tanara between 1663 and 1664; a canal was dug as far as the Pasilyan River and connected to Cisadane. The second phase of the project in 1670-1672 was the development between Tanara and Pontang, including the construction of two canals and dams to irrigate new paddy fields being worked by ten thousand new settlers. The last phase, between 1675 and 1677, was the clearing and irrigation of lands between Banten and Anyer. The scale of the project was quite enormous, spanning from outskirts of Batavia to Anyer on the west coast of Java; 40 kilometres of canals were dug, at least 3 dams were built, more than 40,000 hectares of lands were transformed into "sawah", about 30,000 people were resettled and large numbers of villages created, and two new towns were planned. In 1678 Sultan Ageng created a new palace right in the heart of the newly improved lands in Tirtayasa village. The term "Tirtayasa" itself means "water management" or "hydraulics", which properly describes the sultan's pride project. This new idyllic farmland abode has led to the nickname of the sultan, who was thenceforth famously known as Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa.