Snails on the slopes

I'm afraid that Almaty is one of the latter. Of course, these are fairy tales by Gianni Rodari, who liked to describe how big heaps of rubbish chased people and a plastic bottle, taking the size of a Zeppelin, swallowed a sloven, who had thrown it past the thrashcan. This merrily exposed morals is as old as the world: a man gets what s/he gives. Well, at least his/her children. Future Almaty citizens, it seems, will have to get used to the gas masks. Especially, if the town construction will continue in such an illiterate and criminal manner, as it does now.

In the Soviet era there was a general construction plan - the sanctum sanctorum for architects and constructors, which had to be elaborated by entire institutes in the nearest 10-20 years perspective. It would be impossible even to think about deviating even for an iota from the approved general plan. Today the golden calf owns the construction instruments. The clear example - bombastic villas, crippling the mountain slopes. No problem if it was only about "nouveau riche" lack of taste, one could get used even to this kind of stuff. But the main thing is that the city remained without its "lungs". The daily poisons, accumulated in the warm depression, during the night used to be sucked away by the cold mountain air. This unique air condition doesn't function now - only separate gentlemen enjoy the fresh air, the rest is advised to forget about romantic going out to a balcony to breathe full chest of fresh air. You will breathe shit! It is a mystery how the residents of lower part of the city manage to carry out their living activity. For example Ryskulov Street - it is an almost tangible grey gas corridor. Gases come even into the closed car, eating your eyes, stifling.

Almaty is solidly one of the ten ecologically dirtiest cities of Europe, and in its own country it's almost leading maybe being inferior only to Plumbum-Zinc air of Ust-Kamenogorsk. Here, there's the biggest number of babies born with pathologies - originally sick little folks. Doctors are sure that it is this terrible "cocktail", with which future mothers breathe that is to blame. Such substances of II and III degree of danger, as plumbum, arsenic, phenol, formaldehyde and many others exceed the acceptable coefficient by 11-12 times. Only 9 out of 100 pregnant women could be called healthy.

For sure, it's ridiculous - two tram-car railways for a giant city. For sure, it's sad - rusting underground construction sites, as a monument to bad management. But the main thing, killing the city, about which the specialists have already stopped shouting: unsufficiently considered, chaotic construction. With the beginning of market relations many firms understood what a cosy niche is real estate. The state has submissively yielded the control over new building projects, as the unitary planning demands budget funds, chronically lacking in the treasury. The state construction, more or less attached to location, wind rose etc., died away soon. Investors with money and own wishes not really complying with architectural norms appeared. There were architects assuring that the theory of streets, parallel to breeze direction is bullshit and building is possible in Almaty as in any other city. Many architectural firms are ready to build whatever one pleases at a bought plot of land even an Egyptian pyramid in miniature. Who cares if it blocks sunshine to the neighbouring houses and poisons half neighbourhood with a fuel station constructed nearby. It is market times! Somehow all by itself - obviously, due to its uselessness - the Architects Union of Kazakhstan dissolved, which used to be quite active in creating harmonious "face" of the city, for the style that was beneficial not only to investors and customers. Today the Department of architecture and city-planning permits construction quite simply: on the basis of compliance with CNaR (Construction Norms and Regulations). The issues of ecology are ignored .

...There are different towns in the world. There are explicitly dirty lazy bones, drowning in the smog not less than ours. There are handsome ones licking themselves clean with cat's eagerness. There are super-housewives with a vacuum cleaner and flytraps always ready. But neither of them would kill itself voluntarily, no matter how indifferent it is towards its residents. The worst thing is that we got used to it. We breathe blue clots of exhaust, make rounds around a huge building, which the power of money has made appear in the most inconvenient place, keep silent when instead of a green park they build a parking lot. We are not afraid of kilos and tons of poison, going into the atmosphere, while these figures always become worse according to environmentalists. We live as mutant snails on the mountain slopes, used to breathing the whole Mendeleyev's table, indifferently digesting the information on reducing duration of life. Today in comparison with 1990 Kazakhstanis exist 1.5 years less. And nobody listens to the honest specialists: "The construction mustn't be this way, we will suffocate, you disrupt the rhythm of the city..." To Hell with the rhythm. Faster, faster!

And now a square meter must cost a thousand bucks. And who gives a damn about all the rest. That's why it doesn't love us.