The newly-erected tower of Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.
© AFP Antoine Lambroschini

ASTANA (AFP) - Once a sleepy town in the heart of the vast Central Asian steppe, Astana has mushroomed in the 10 years since Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's first president, moved the capital here from Almaty in the southeast, near the Chinese border.

The steppe city previously known as Akmola has become a showcase for Nazarbayev's vision of Kazakhstan as a modern, wealthy country in touch with international trends.

"He worries about all the details, no one cares more than him about the city's development," said Astana's chief architect, Sarsembel Zhunusov.

Skyscrapers, bizarre monuments and public buildings designed by leading international architects, including Britain's Norman Foster, are springing up all around.

In downtown Astana stands a metallic tower topped with a huge golden egg.

Visitors can climb the tower and place their hand in Nazarbayev's handprint, cast in metal.

The tower is perfectly aligned with a white pyramid on the horizon behind the president's office.

Meanwhile Foster's tent-shaped construction, which will house a beach and open-air cafes, is going up nearby.

Mewly-erected buildings in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.
© AFP Antoine Lambroschini

But critics worry that the city's massive expansion is coming at the expense of safety and quality. They point to a lack of urban infrastructure, as well as design faults.

In a decade the population of Astana has more than doubled from 280,000 to 570,000 inhabitants and up to 1.1 million square metres (11.8 million square feet) of living space is being built each year.

The increased population is putting Nazarbayev's vision to the test.

While the city's new skyscrapers are ultra-modern, they have problems with humidity, heating and insulation as local temperatures plunge to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in winter.

"Everything looks fine from outside, but once a building is ready for use, nerve-jarring details appear," said Farit Galimov, a Kazakh senator who also heads up a builders' association.

Last year a fire broke out in a skyscraper that houses the new transport ministry building and is known by locals as "the cigarette lighter" due to its tapered form.

The building turned out to be coated in highly flammable panels and firefighters could not reach the flames. Fortunately there were no casualties.

Opposition political parties, which have been marginalized in flawed elections, have criticized the lavish construction budgets for Astana, estimated at around one billion dollars per year, as a waste of the country's growing oil wealth.

Newly-erected buildings in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.
© AFP Antoine Lambroschini

"It's too much money, there are more important problems in the country -- health, education, access to drinking water," fumed Oraz Zhandosov, one of the leaders of the For A Just Kazakhstan movement.

The government insists most of the financing comes from private investors.

In any case observers see little chance of city planners scaling down building projects and budgets given the 66-year-old Kazakh leader's taste for the grandiose and lavish.

Astana is due to celebrate its 10 years as capital belatedly on July 6, 2008. The date chosen is no coincidence. It is Nazarbayev's birthday.

©AFP