I nominate this beautiful, planned capital you would never have heard of, yet it has existed for more than 10 years now. Built at a cost of $5 Billion from the ground up, its really beautiful:
An aerial view of the city. Beautiful, planned city.
A city with beautiful golden monuments:
With palaces and perfect gardens to accompany them
A beautiful, no expense spared parliament room:
But…..
Where are the people?
That believe it or not is a 20 lane Boulevard in the city.
May I present to you the capital city of Myanmar? Naypyidaw. No, silly, it is not Yangon or Rangoon for a decade now. Imagine in Phoebe Buffay’s voice: It’s Naypyidaw, Naypyidaw.
The military regime of Myanmar decided to build this capital in the early 2000s in the middle of nowhere spending a vast mount of money without any clear goals of why it was needed.
The city is four times the size of London, has a Penguin habitat, but less than a million people. Most of the recent publications I’ve read seem to be confused as to why this city exists at all.
It’s 300km from the ancient capital of Yangon from where the ministers commute by road. There was even a plan for a metro, thankfully the govt realized they don’t really need it!
Another photo of wide, beautiful streets with hardly any people on it.
The almost unknown, expensive, beautiful, ghost city of Naypyidaw is definitely one of its kind.
-SaGa
Burma's bizarre capital: a super-sized slice of post-apocalypse suburbia
