IN FOCUS: The desires and perils of shifting capitals in a altering Asia | USAEMALL.com

THE TWO-CAPITAL TRAP

Around the world, a structural trap that haunts many relocations is the “two-capital” dilemma. Governments move ministries but not markets, and parliaments but not people. 

In Kazakhstan, the quest to legitimise its new capital, Astana, has been a long and uneasy process. Naypyidaw too, another city dropped into the relatively obscure but strategic heartland of Myanmar, has for decades failed to capture the life and culture of Yangon.

The seat of the Malaysian government was moved to Putrajaya in 1999 to serve as the country’s administrative capital and ease congestion in Kuala Lumpur. Its 35km proximity from downtown KL has meant it remains in the orbit of the city it was designed to relieve.

Other established capitals like Canberra, Islamabad and Brasilia are functioning, liveable cities but took decades and expenditure in political capital to establish themselves.

That is an investment that may come at a cost to existing places, according to Moller, and should be considered by those eyeing such projects.

In many of the current capital cities, issues such as air pollution, traffic congestion and flooding still require funds and the attention of policymakers to tackle.

“If you’re spending so much time and energy on this very challenging project, you literally, you physiologically, cannot spend it on trying to fix other smaller, less sexy policy problems,” he said.

As Chintan Raveshia of Arup noted, if phase one of a new capital does not get the fundamentals right – namely the governance, transparency and environmental framework – “you’re going to have a massive problem legitimising the city for another 20 years to come”.

“The most difficult thing for a new capital city is that it doesn’t have any memory. And memory is what makes cities,” said Raveshia, who leads the cities, planning and design business in the Asia-Pacific region for Arup, a global planning, design and engineering consultancy that worked on Nusantara.

“And when you don’t have that generational aspect of memories, a sense of ownership doesn’t exist.”