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Paper long abstract:

Capital cities often become leaders' pet projects: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan is a veritable monument to Turkmenbashi, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan Mirziyoyez, is orchestrating top-down urbanization displacing citizens and Astana (now Nursultan) Kazakhstan is Nazarbayev's personal domain. Urbanization in capital cities is reflective of both national politics and leadership ideology; they are used as synecdoche for the entire nation (Koch, 2018). Literature on urban planning in Central Asian has largely focused on top-down projects and capital cities. However, urbanization in these countries outside of these spaces is vital in understanding how people organize their lives and society outside of the spotlight. Nazarbayev moved the Kazakh capital north to what is now Nursultan as he believed that Almaty was not centrally located, and, that the former capital was laden with symbols of the Soviet era. To this day, residents of Almaty use the old Soviet street names and the new Kazakh names interchangeably. The President's decision to move the capital to Nursultan reflects a view that the Almaty was the capital of the past. The government's shift in focus to Astana has created space for citizen action in urbanization in Almaty. There is a robust movement which is addressing issues such as improving the street profile in non-Central districts, transforming residential space to meet modern needs, and workshops with architecture students on how to consider the Soviet heritage in their work. There are civic actors curating exhibitions concerning the Soviet legacy in architecture and its role in modern Almaty. In studying citizen led urban planning initiatives and the work of architect-activists, we can understand how the people in these urban spaces are designing their ideal environments, what their visions for their cities are, and how their identity is projected in their landscape. Through interviews with architect activists, citizens involved in these projects, the civic leadership and attendance at relevant events, I aim to learn firsthand what these visions are. While Nursultan's population is growing, Almaty remains much more densely populated, and there are numerous more populous urban areas throughout Kazakhstan. In these cities, residents are not building anew, they are contending with the Soviet infrastructure and it is incorporated in their lives. As such, most people are not simply changing their setting to abolish all traces of the Soviet legacy in their lives. It is present, and inevitably influences their contemporary identity.