KZBlog

Shortly after Turkey’s President came to Astana, the London Telegraph has announced that Turkish firm Sembol will be building an indoor city in Astana. The circumference will be 2km, apparently 2 times bigger than the Millennium Dome in London. Presumably it will be extremely expensive to live there so I don’t see me or anyone I know moving in when it’s finished.

I was interested to note that Sembol, although it’s a construction firm, runs the Rixos hotel, the city stadium and the new Congress Hall. That’s more than a few big projects given over to foreign management.

As for the new indoor city, I do wish they could pave all the roads in Astana, put sidewalks in everywhere, fix the water and electricity systems so they don’t break down so often, improve the road system (anyone whose been stuck in traffic these past few days knows that in a lot of parts of Astana, there’s only one road that goes to certain places), and clean up all the garbage. Then, if there’s time and money left over, they can get to prestige projects. Especially as I remember a friend of mine coming to Astana a few years ago and saying that she had seen models of this indoor city on the minimap in Bayterek. All of my friends, Kazakh and foreign, said, “A giant indoor city? No, that’s ridiculous. Who needs it? Why would anyone want that? What a waste of money. You must have misunderstood.”

So, gentle readers, do you want an indoor city?