Astana: the world's weirdest capital city

Astana: the world's weirdest capital city - CNNhttp://www.cnn.com/2012/07/13/world/asia/eye-on-kazakhstan-astana/

"There is something mirage-like about Kazakhstan's capital Astana. Little surrounds the city for 1,200 kilometers, save a handful of provincial towns dotted across the world's largest steppe, a flat, empty expanse of grassland."

Astana, Kazakhstan is a textbook example of a "forward capital" i.e. symbolically relocated for strategic reasons. Astana became the capital in 1997 in the years after Kazakhstan became independent from the USSR in 1991. The move was designed to put Kazakhstan's capital in a more central location than former capital Almaty, which is close to the borders with China and Kyrgyzstan. Officials said the move was designed to spread wealth more evenly throughout Kazakhstan, which now had control of its own immense farmland and fossil fuels since it was no longer under Soviet rule. They also said Almaty was earthquake-prone and they wanted to move the capital away from China. Clearly, it is also towards Russia.

Before the move, Astana "which was then an empty patch of land by the Ishim River best known as a former gulag prison camp for the wives of Soviet traitors..."

I have seen a number of job advertisements for teachers in Astana on teacher job boards, both K-12 and university. If you go to teachaway.com > job board > Kazakhstan you can see some of them. Kazakhstan is a country with strong ties to Russia, the Russians who were parachuted in to govern during the USSR still have a lot of wealth and power there.

Kazakhstan is a huge country of nomadic heritage, with lots of open spaces. It makes sense that wolves would abound around the capital.

"In the winter months temperatures can fall to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit), making it the second coldest capital city in the world..."

"You need to understand the Kazakh background to get a better picture of our world view. We're a nomadic civilization that developed over thousands of years in the vast expanse of Eurasia. Free space is more impressive to the Kazakh mindset than the type of congestion found in many European centers..."