Spatial Apparatuses in Central Asia. The Case of Astana/ Centrines Azijos Erdviniai Modeliai. Astanos Atvejis

Introduction In the last two hundred years, the Central Asia has always been a centre of geopolitical question. Since the Great Game (Hopkirk 1992) started (in the early nineteenth century), until the first World War, tsarist Russia and England tried to conquer these territories. Russia formally conquered most of the area, but it started to have a strong control on the region only after it became the Soviet Union. In the period from 1920 to 1989, in a state of manifested stability, the Central Asia has been industrialized and its population has undergone a rapid process of sedentarization. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the five countries' independence, however, the New Great Game (NYT 1996) started: the world's most powerful nations established diplomatic relations and trade networks following the logic of energetic and strategic resources appropriation, as after the breakdown of the former Soviet Union huge new potential reserves of hydrocarbons were freed up in these territories (Herberg 2010). How geopolitics influences urban and regional planning, how it is translated into spatial apparatuses, are the main themes of this dissertation.