Why Not a World City? Astana, Ankara, and Geopolitical Scripts in Urban Networks

Abstract

The world cities literature typically examines how and why certain cities achieve world city status, but this article examines why some actors eschew the world city competition and choose not to engage the discourse, despite deploying the very same urban development tactics. Through a case study of Astana, Kazakhstan's new capital city, I argue that state- and nation-building concerns in the era of independence have prevailed over interests in engaging the free market and liberalist narratives that accompany the world cities discourse. Demonstrating how the Nazarbayev regime has largely modeled its Astana project on Atatürk's development of Ankara, I jointly examine geopolitical discourses that shape how the relationship between the two cities is narrated and interpreted by elite and ordinary citizens alike. Drawing on data from interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted in Kazakhstan from 2009–2011, I demonstrate how these identities support the Nazarbayev regime's state-dominated economic arrangements much more effectively than could a neoliberal world cities script. [Keywords: Kazakhstan, Turkey, capital city, world cities, comparative urbanism, geopolitics.] An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Seattle, Washington. Thanks also to Bülent Batuman and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions for improving this paper. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 1003836. This research was also supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, an NSF Nordic Research Opportunity grant, an IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunity Grant, and a U.S. State Department Title VIII Grant for work at the University of Illinois Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, or any other granting organization.