How governments move.

Changes are expected in the Russian capital. President Dmitry Medvedev became concerned about Moscow's infrastructure and decided to rid it of some of the capital's functions by moving a number of government institutions outside the city. “England and France are not keen on such experiments,” says Alexander Skokan, head of the Ostozhenka architectural bureau, ironically. “Moving the capital is the lot of younger civilizations.” Forbes studied the experience of builders in other capitals.

Putrajaya, Malaysia

This garden city grew up on the site of a forest of rubber trees. The reasons why Malaysians decided to undertake the expensive project look familiar. First, it was necessary to reduce the load on the infrastructure of the overpopulated capital, Kuala Lumpur. By 1995, 1.3 million people lived there, or 6% of the country's population (for comparison, 8% of Russians now live in Moscow). Secondly, government agencies needed more and more premises, and there was physically no room for them within the city. And finally, a city well planned from an urban planning point of view, equipped with the most modern technical solutions, was supposed to increase the efficiency of the government, according to the plan of the Malaysian authorities.

The ideological inspirer of the construction of the new city was the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, known for holding this position for 22 years, the longest in the history of independent Malaysia. Dr. Mahathir also had his own “Skolkovo” - the so-called multimedia supercorridor - a narrow line south of Kuala Lumpur, which is planned to be turned into an analogue of Silicon Valley. Putrajaya was built in the middle of this “corridor”, 25 km from the capital and 20 km from the international airport. Almost all work, from design development to construction, was carried out by local architects, engineers and other contractors. A special company, Perbadanan Putrajaya, was created to manage the project, and the main developer was Putrajaya Holdings, a company that is 64% owned by the local state oil company Petronas. In 2010, the revenue of this company exceeded $75 billion, despite the fact that Malaysia's GDP is $240 billion - not a single Russian company can boast of revenue comparable to a third of the national GDP. Oil workers became the main investors in the Putrajaya project, which costs more than $8 billion.

According to the project, government buildings should occupy no more than 5% of the area of the new administrative center. 14% is residential, 3% is commercial development, and nearly 40% is parks and other open space. This includes a man-made lake, which separates the central part of the city from other areas and promotes natural cooling in hot weather.

Construction of the city began in 1995, its official opening took place in 1999, and federal officials slowly began to move there. Putrajaya still remains in the status of an “administrative center”, since the parliament and the royal residence are still located in Kuala Lumpur. The city's population is planned to increase to 320,000 people; now it exceeds 70,000; The city employs more than 40,000 federal employees.

Can the project be considered successful and the goals achieved? In 2009, the population of Kuala Lumpur was 1.8 million people, and by 2011 it had dropped to 1.6 million. However, not all plans for the “city of the future” were realized. For example, the intra-city railway system, for which a beautiful bridge was built in 2004, has not yet been built. For now, non-eco-friendly buses remain the main form of public transport in the city. And if government buildings are fully built, commercial and residential facilities are a little more than half ready. But one way or another, a city has grown up in a deserted swampy area in less than 10 years - Russians have a lot to learn.

Here are some more examples of how the country's authorities experimented with its capital.

Brasilia, Brazil

Brazilian politicians first formulated the idea that the country needed a new capital instead of Rio de Janeiro immediately after liberation from Portuguese rule in 1822. But the idea was realized only in the 1960s: the government allocated a site in the central part of the country on the banks of an artificial reservoir to stimulate the economic development of the territory, and announced a competition, which was won by Le Corbusier's follower, the Brazilian Lucio Costa. He designed a “radiant city”, resembling an airplane or a bird from above with wings spread from north to south. In accordance with the ideas of Le Corbusier, places of work, leisure, residence, and shopping were separated from each other. The new capital designed a road network that included numerous expressways and ring roads and was completely devoid of traffic lights. The urban planning solution secured Costa's creation a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but did not save the city from the usual problems: an army of builders (60,000 people) settled in it along with their families, then the migration of residents of poor surrounding provinces began there, and now in Brasilia, originally designed for 500,000 people, more than 2.5 million live. The city is surrounded by anthill suburbs and has lost its original bird shape. But some things have remained unchanged: the police here, as at the time of the founding of the “radiant city,” are strict and incorruptible, the roads are smooth, and drivers allow pedestrians to pass at zebra crossings, which is not accepted in Brazil, as in Russia.

Washington, USA

Experts interviewed by Forbes recognized Washington as the most successful experience in moving the capital. The first capital of the United States was Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Continental Congress met. However, in 1793, members of Congress were attacked by rioting soldiers, and state authorities refused to use force to restore order. After this, it was decided that the capital of the state should not depend on any state. And they decided to build it near large cities, New York and Philadelphia, on the banks of the Potomac River, separating the northern and southern states. By the way, 24 km away was the estate of George Washington - it is believed that it was he who made the final choice of the location of the capital named after him.

Astana, Kazakhstan

The capital of Kazakhstan has moved from place to place four times. At first, when the Kazakh ASSR was just created as part of the Soviet Union, the capital was located outside its borders in Orenburg, where many Kazakhs lived: there were simply no large cities on the territory of Kazakhstan at that time. After which the capital moved twice and eventually ended up in Alma-Ata, a city once founded by the imperial authorities on a mountain plateau in Alatau (the first name of the city was Verny). Having headed independent Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1998 founded a new capital, no longer in the foothill seismic zone in the south, but in the industrialized north. The small town of Akmola, which became the base for the new construction, was renamed Astana (“capital” in Kazakh). According to various estimates, the volume of investment in construction amounted to $8–12 billion, of which over $2 billion came from budgets of various levels. The population of the new capital, where all the officials had already moved, tripled, to 800,000 people. At the same time, according to population census data, the share of the Russian-speaking population in Astana decreased from 54% to 19%.

Nomadic capitals