KZBlog

We’re all pretty sick of the long winters here in Astana. It’s cold and windy. And all the new construction is hard to get done on schedule with the bad weather, not to mention the difficulty of finding materials that will stand up to the weather. It’s no secret that it can go to -30C in the winter and +30 in the summer. So not everyone who lives in the new capital is thrilled with it. There have been the occasional rumors that not even the chief architect of the capital, President Nazarbayev himself, is satisfied. Still, I was surprised to hear that a member of Parliament has suggested that the capital of Kazakhstan be moved again.

Apparently there is a movement afoot in Astana to move the capital to a more temperate climate and also to start over again in order to rectify all the mistakes that were made. According to Gazeta.kz, Member of Parliament Azamat Aldekimov has proposed the move for a number of reasons:

The residents of the young northern capital know that many conditions are not good for the reason that the Astana was originally built as the Akmola and Tsleningrad, which is to say is not to be as the capital of an independent country such as the Republic of Kazakhstan. So we have some problems with the traffic due to the roads width being of not sufficent. And the space zones for the erecting of buildings is limited except in the special new areas of Left Bank and others. It is for this reasons that I propose we move the capital once again to a new to be decided area of moderate climate and which is having no pre-existing infrastructure. Besides, I am freezing cold and even today, the first of April there’s still half a meter of snow on the ground. This is insane people!

Aldekimov went on to recommend the empty Sara-Arkai steppes near Lake Balkhash as the heart of Kazakh history and culture. “Hey, we could even put in a river like the River Ishim,” he was quoted as saying. “No one will notice the difference.”