http://gizmodo.com/what-does-a-city-of-the-third-industrial-revolution-l-1453596397/1454163901
Expand
In 2017, the capital of Kazakhstan will look like the set of an utopian sci-fi movie, which seems appropriate considering this is the place from where the Soviet Union conquered space. A titanic new capital will rise by the old city, powered by sun and wind. Move over Dubai. Your cliché New York-wannabe skyline is the past. This is the real future.
Expand
This, apparently.
After several months of debate, officials in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Astana have chosen a final design for the massive site that will host the World EXPO 2017. The sprawling, wind- and sun-powered neighborhood was designed by Chicago architects Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the designers of Kingdom Tower—the forthcoming world’s tallest building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Expand
According to the chairman of the company that’s heading up the EXPO 2017, Smith + Gill’s design “will embody the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution.” If that phrase sounds familiar, that’s because it’s borrowed from Jeremy Rifkin, economist and author of the popular 2011 book The Third Industrial Revolution, which outlines a theory of a shared clean energy grid that will transform culture and production.
The reference is intentional—Rifkin has become an important figure in planning the future of Astana, a massive new city on the steppe that was built with oil money after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Expand
Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has taken a keen liking to Rifkin’s work, which calls for the emergence of a new era by way of renewable, clean energy, all delivered by way of a smart energy grid.
He’s given speeches that call for Kazakhstan to adopt Rifkin’s model, saying, “the ‘Energy Internet’ will enable millions of people to use clean energy in their homes, offices and factories, and to exchange it easily.”
This year, Nazarbayev even appointed the Wharton lecturer to serve as an advisor on the EXPO 2017 project.
Expand
Which brings us back to the newly-announced winning design from Smith + Gill. Akin to Masdar in the UAE, it will be a self-sufficient, 500-acre neighborhood with plenty of exhibition space for the EXPO itself.
Ironically, although it’s a gargantuan and expensive design, it was chosen for its relative modesty amongst 44 other proposals.
Apparently, the EXPO buildings are all designed to be repurposed afterward, either as housing or commercial space. More importantly, the city will be powered simply by wind and sun—in accordance with Rifkin’s ideas about an “internet of energy.” The specifics of the architecture itself is forthcoming, and is bound to evolve quite a bit over the next year before construction begins.
Expand
But, on a broader urban scale, there are still many questions to be answered. Astana is a kind of urban anomaly: A massive city populated by huge, whimsical buildings built by some of the most respected architects in the world. Yet, as Keith Gessen wrote in a fascinating New Yorker piece about the city, many of these buildings are empty—and it remains to be seen whether EXPO 2017 will serve a purpose once the roughly three million EXPO attendees have gone home.
More is surely to come on this story—we’ve reached out to Rifkin for comment, and the EXPO site breaks ground next year.
Openhearted Rebellion 
Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev
You can get away with building “Earth’s first city of the future” when you’re the absolute ruler of a very large country with an oil based economy…
From Wikipedia
In 2004 Transparency International ranked Kazakhstan 122nd (tied with several other nations) in its listing of 146 countries by level of corruption. Kazakhstan’s total score out of 10, with 10 being the best, was 2.2 (any score under 3 indicated “rampant corruption”).[31] President Nazarbayev declared a holy war against corruption and ordered the adoption of “10 steps against corruption”[32] to fight corruption at all levels of state and society. A few international NGOs have accused the Nazarbayev government of merely paying lip service to anti-corruption efforts. Despite becoming a chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2010, some civil activists inside and outside[citation needed] the country stated that little was done to address human rights abuses and widespread corruption. The Nazarbayev family itself was embroiled in a series of investigations by Western governments into money laundering, bribery, and assassinations. Among these investigations was the so-called Kazakhgate, as the result of which the US Department of Justice did not find the Nazarbayev family guilty and closed the case in August 2010.[33]
A former minister in the Nazarbayev government, Zamanbek K. Nurkadilov, said that Nazarbayev should answer allegations that Kazakh officials had accepted millions of US dollars in bribes from an intermediary for U.S. oil firms in the 1990s.[34]
Nazarbayev has been called one of the “ultimate oligarchs” of the post-Soviet central Asia states.[35] He is believed to have transferred at least $1 billion worth of oil revenues to his private bank accounts in other countries and his family controls many other key enterprises in Kazakhstan.[35]
LikeLike
Reblogged this on the cosmic pilgrim.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Awakening to Arachanaï.
LikeLike