Инфраструктурная инерция в landlocked-агломерациях

Almaty’s smog should not be treated as a mere ecological anomaly or the result of localized regulatory failure. Rather, it is a symptom of the city’s historically entrenched transport-energy architecture — a form of ecological violence produced by infrastructural inertia, in which outdated planning decisions and colonial logistical practices continue to shape urban flows and environmental conditions. Almaty thus emerges as a case study within a global typology of cities where historical inertia, topography, and institutional continuity interact to generate long-term structural constraints and systemic vulnerabilities.

The analysis of infrastructural inertia in agglomerations proceeds along three primary, interrelated axes. The first axis concerns the contour-dependence of agglomeration infrastructure on transport networks, energy systems, and industrial nodes that determine foundational trajectories of development. Such predetermined vectors do not arise spontaneously; they are products of earlier epochs, carrying with them both sympathies and antagonisms that become fertile ground for ideological speculation. Under conditions of intense political competition and the search for legitimizing social narratives, revanchist and obstructionist practices may emerge under the banner of “cultural heritage preservation,” complicating processes of infrastructural renovation. Descendants and successors of prior ideological formations may demonstrate a willingness to sabotage modernization, invoking the need to preserve moral-ethical foundations embedded in urban architecture and infrastructural frameworks. The logic often condenses into a manifesto-like declaration: “We built everything here! We taught you civilization! Preserve the signs of our historical dominance and grandeur!” Even when contemporary urban needs have fundamentally changed, architectural forms and infrastructural levers may be mobilized to sustain social and civilizational influence.

The second axis concerns the topographic traps of landlocked agglomerations: basin-like geographies, diurnal and seasonal temperature inversions, and limited transit outlets that intensify the concentration of pollutants and airborne particulates, rendering cities vulnerable to persistent smog accumulation. This axis is equally susceptible to discursive manipulation, since the selective silencing or amplification of particular environmental features can reshape the explanatory framework through which urban crises are interpreted.

The third axis addresses the postcolonial logistics of cities originally designed as rear bases or strategic hubs, whose historical functions have been preserved over extended periods. Urban planning principles established during the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, particularly in the construction of linear chains of cities, embedded infrastructural meanings that continue to structure demographic nodes and urban development patterns. These foundational approaches defined the degree and character of urban autonomy, reproducing dependence on external forces and systemic flows across generations.

Within the discursive frame of this review, attention is also given to the phenomenon of “witch hunts” in public debates surrounding urban air pollution. Using the Almaty agglomeration as a focal case, the analysis examines the search for individual culprits while systemic causes remain outside the scope of incentivized attention. This phenomenon underscores that the problem is not moral but structural, requiring analysis through the lenses of architecture, infrastructure, and institutional history.

The review adopts a methodological approach grounded in political ecology and infrastructural critique. Following Keller Easterling (2014)[i], infrastructure is conceptualized as a spatial form of power and a medium through which social flows are organized. In a manner comparable to Erik Swyngedouw (2004[ii]), the narrative emphasizes the interdependence of urban environments, power relations, and resource distribution. In parallel with Ulrich Beck (1992)[iii], the analysis invokes the framework of the risk society, where the consequences of technological and planning inertia become socially and ecologically critical.

THE BASIN AS MACHINE: GEOGRAPHY AS A CAPTURE ARCHITECTURE

Among numerous comparable agglomerations, the Almaty agglomeration stands out as a concentrated empirical node in which key features manifest simultaneously, observably, and in mutually reinforcing configurations. The city of Almaty is situated within a basin framed by the spurs of the Trans-Ili Alatau, producing conditions for what may be described as a topographic ecological trap. Basin morphology constrains horizontal air circulation, particularly in winter, when temperature inversions hold cold, pollution-saturated air close to the surface. The city thus operates as a machine of capture, accumulating pollutants from both local and regional sources.

Beyond anthropogenic emissions — coal-fired combined heat and power plants, motorized transport, individual heating systems, and aviation traffic from Almaty Airport — the smog is intensified by myriad fine dust and micro-sand particles transported upward from the surrounding steppe belt. In the steppe zones of Almaty Region, unlike the foothill zones of the agglomeration, cloud formations and storm fronts rarely linger. Significant elevations are absent, and as air masses warm, physical dynamics carry them toward the foothills. A mosaic of snow cover and heat-absorbing steppe soil persists even after precipitation-bearing cyclones.

The warming expanses of the northwestern and northern territories — once the seabed of the Tethys Ocean and enriched over millions of years with sedimentary deposits — function as vast reservoirs of dune sand and clay-sand particulates. Even under regionally negative winter temperatures, localized warming generates air currents that move toward the foothills and ultimately into the urban zone. Within the agglomeration’s urbanized districts, these currents encounter relatively warmer atmospheric layers and become suspended at particular altitudes, mixing under clear weather conditions with local emissions and intensifying concentrations of fine particulate matter and liquid aerosols with diameters of 2.5 micrometers. Persistently rising warm air masses sustain this suspended “screen,” preventing deposition in the absence of precipitation.

The Almaty agglomeration therefore constitutes a clear example of a smog-affected region in which pollution results not solely from anthropogenic urban infrastructure but also from regional landscapes and deep geomorphological histories, including ancient sedimentary formations. Empirical data underscore the systemic nature of the problem: winter PM2.5 concentrations regularly exceed 50–100 µg/m; — ten to twenty times higher than the World Health Organization’s annual guideline of 5 µg/m; (air.org.kz)[iv].

From the perspective of political ecology, urban air is part of the city’s metabolic system, where infrastructure, resources, and social flows form interdependent configurations. As Erik Swyngedouw (2004)[v] argues, the urban environment is simultaneously a social and ecological process in which the control of resource flows constitutes a form of power. In this context, the principle of splintering urbanism, articulated by Graham and Marvin (2001)[vi], becomes relevant, reflecting the segmentation of spatial and ecological burdens. Infrastructure distributes risk unevenly, concentrating pollution within the basin while intensifying patterns of social vulnerability.

The philosophical dimension of ecological interconnectedness proposed by Timothy Morton (2007)[vii] further frames the environmental condition of the Almaty agglomeration as a manifestation of entanglement — the complex interweaving of nature, technological systems, and ideologically mediated human practices. Basin topography, regional steppe dust flows, transport and energy infrastructures, and social contexts converge to produce a persistent pollution trap. In this sense, Almaty’s smog is not an accidental byproduct of localized violations but a systemic symptom of the ecological violence of infrastructural inertia.

RAILWAY AS GOVERNANCE: INFRASTRUCTURE AS AN ARCHITECTURE OF POWER

The historical roots of Almaty’s transport architecture extend back to the strategies of the Russian Empire; however, to understand contemporary smog as a symptom of structural inertia, one must trace a chain of intermediary factors. A central element in this trajectory was the expansion of railway lines into the Trans-Caspian territories, then into Central Asia, and ultimately the construction of Turksib — the Turkestan–Siberian Railway — during the 1920s–1930s. From its inception, this rail corridor was conceived and reproduced as an instrument of military and extractive logistics, designed to facilitate troop redeployment, supply colonial garrisons, and transport resources from industrialized regions of the empire into the steppe and mountainous zones of newly consolidated territories. As Peter Hopkirk (1992)[viii] describes in contemporary language, the Turksib was envisioned during the reign of Tsar Alexander III within the geopolitical context of the Great Game — the rivalry between the Russian and British empires. Yet, due to the disruptions of World War I and the Russian Revolution, the implementation and operational realization of Turksib ultimately fell to the Bolsheviks.

As a consequence, a series of supply nodes emerged along the Turksib corridor, including the city of Verny (“loyal”) / Alma-Ata (a Russified rendering meaning “father of apples”), which functioned as a strategic intermediary hub for rail transit, the storage of coal, grain, industrial cargo, armaments, and military supplies. Such nodes were not accidental. As Anthony King (2016)[ix] argues, their placement corresponded precisely to the principles of a colonial geometry of power, in which transport infrastructure dictated the spatial organization of cities and defined their functional roles within an imperial network.

Migration flows and demographic transformations constituted the next major factor. The railway did more than transport material resources; it actively stimulated settlement by anchoring labor forces, engineers, and administrative structures. Urban populations expanded concentrically along the transport axis, producing dense nodes in which infrastructure and inhabitants operated as an integrated system. The railway thus became the subsequent urban skeleton, determining the city’s structural evolution.

Industrialization and coal-based energy production in the city and its surrounding territories were directly tied to the railway. The emergence of combined heat and power plants, coal depots, commodity warehouses, industrial zones, and later petroleum storage facilities in close proximity to rail infrastructure intensified the city’s path dependency. Transport corridors simultaneously sustain the supply chains of energy facilities and fix their spatial positioning within logistical systems. Energy infrastructures, in turn, reinforce infrastructural trajectories that shape settlement density and migration patterns.

Already in the early Soviet period, a fixed transport geometry took shape, linking arterial directions, industrial and residential zoning, population density, and mobility routes through historically predetermined infrastructural architecture. This structure continues to function as a form of governance within the city now known as Almaty (“place of apples” in Kazakh). It regulates social, economic, and ecological flows, generating durable dependencies that resist contemporary interventions even under changing political and economic conditions.

As Keller Easterling (2014)[x] emphasizes within the framework of infrastructural critique, transport networks should be understood as spaces where physical objects, regulatory norms, and social practices form a unified and dynamic organism of power and control. The Turksib and its associated infrastructures did not merely sustain military and economic functions; they fixed urban and demographic patterns that continue to shape Almaty’s ecological and social conditions — a city that has long outgrown the confines of the Verny fort and the Soviet-era sub-million Alma-Ata. Accordingly, the winter smog that annually unsettles residents should be read not only as an environmental byproduct of local emissions but as a symptom of infrastructural memory, in which railway systems and the energy networks bound to them operate simultaneously as frameworks of power, drivers of demographic form, and mechanisms that structurally constrain ecological flows.

PATH DEPENDENCY: WHY INFRASTRUCTURE DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO FORGET

The systemic inertia of urban infrastructure manifests through the phenomenon of path dependency, whereby historically embedded decisions continue to structure development even under radically altered social, demographic, and technological conditions. As Paul David (2000)[xi] observes, path dependency emerges when an initial choice generates a developmental trajectory that becomes difficult to exit without radical intervention. Brian Arthur (1994)[xii] extends this analysis through the concept of increasing returns, whereby existing networks and practices reinforce themselves: each additional infrastructural unit benefits from those already in place, further consolidating the selected path.

In the case of Almaty, this process unfolds as a sequential chain in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century military logistics are succeeded by industrial transport and resource provisioning. As a result, the contours of what may be described as an urban “coral” have long been fixed for the present era and those to follow. Onto this framework are layered demographic pressures, automotive expansion, the growth of the urban heat island alongside territorial expansion, the chaotic patterns of construction over the past three decades, and the intensification of air traffic.

Together, these dynamics shape dense urban smog, chronic pendular transport congestion, and increasing complexity in planning and communication systems. The Turksib railway and its nodal stations established the initial axes of resource and population movement. Coal-fired combined heat and power plants and industrial facilities then anchored these axes both physically and functionally. With the rise of mass automobile use, these corridors were further reinforced: new roads followed established routes, while building density, economic circulation, and social dynamics continued to conform to historically determined transport geometry.

The metaphor of a “coral structure” captures a form of decentralized growth organized around existing infrastructural nodes, where each new element develops in reference to those preceding it, producing a dense web of dependencies. Such a configuration generates long-term urban and ecological patterns. Networks of arterial roads and nodes fix the directions of migratory and economic flows, restrict horizontal mobility, concentrate transport and energy loads, and, as a consequence, produce chronic environmental conditions: smog, congestion, and energy system overload. These outcomes are not accidental failures of planning but the effects of structural inertia, in which each new transport or energy addition merely reinforces pre-existing trajectories. Moreover, this dynamic is capable of producing new fractalized problem clusters that extend beyond the scope of the present analysis.

It thus becomes evident that infrastructure does not know how to forget. It retains the memory of past strategic, military, and economic decisions long after their original rationales have expired. In the context of Almaty, this memory materializes as a persistent framework of ecological and urban pressure. Any attempt at radical intervention in the presence of these “memory nodes” carries significant risk: either new structural problems are generated, or existing concentrations of pollution and overload are further intensified.

WITCH HUNTS: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BLAME IN URBAN CATASTROPHE

Almaty’s smog is not only an infrastructural and physical condition but also a social phenomenon in which the concentration of pollution becomes a trigger for the public distribution of blame. A systemic dynamic of “witch hunts” emerges: collective attention fixates on specific groups — motorists driving aging vehicles while struggling to make ends meet, residents of low-rise private housing reliant on stove heating, small barbecue vendors, or even individuals holding permitted picnics with open fires. These focal points displace analysis of the deeper causes of smog rooted in infrastructural inertia, historically embedded transport architecture, and the city’s energy network.

From the perspective of Ren; Girard’s scapegoating theory (1986)[xiii], communities instinctively search for external culprits in order to stabilize social tension. Individuals and groups become symbolic “witches,” onto whom structural fears and anxieties are projected. In Almaty’s case, “those who smoke and breathe” are cast as responsible, while the underlying drivers lie in systemic infrastructural inertia. This dynamic is reinforced by Ulrich Beck’s concept of the risk society (1992)[xiv], in which contemporary cities confront technological and ecological risks that cannot be localized or governed through traditional institutional mechanisms. Under conditions of uncertainty, responsibility is shifted toward visible, concrete actors rather than toward the system itself — because regional-scale reform is far more complex than identifying and punishing “cursed witches.”

An accompanying phenomenon may be described as everyday blame ecology, whereby recurring practices of accusation produce durable social narratives that legitimize the redistribution of budgetary flows and the allocation of resources through new regimes of penalties, regulatory logics, and ethical frameworks. Municipal and regional programs, for example, often emphasize fleet renewal or mandatory connection to gas networks — systems that frequently operate as monopolized infrastructures of pipelines and distribution. Such measures generate the appearance of systemic solutions while leaving primary drivers of smog — outdated coal-based energy production, entrenched transport logics, and topographic traps — largely unaddressed.

This conflict between analytical registers — moral and systemic — intensifies inefficiency. State responses target the “visible” actions of particular groups while simultaneously reinforcing social and infrastructural inequalities. The “guilty” become objects of symbolic punishment through prohibitions, fines, and campaigns of deterrence, while the city continues to function as a trap of ecological and transport inertia. In this sense, the “witch hunt” in the context of Almaty is more than a social phenomenon; it can serve as a convenient instrument for budgetary distribution and pseudo-solutions shaped by human factors and administrative incentives, enabling authorities to demonstrate activity without undertaking radical infrastructural reform. Understanding this dynamic requires a careful differentiation of analytical levels: psychological, social, institutional, and technological.

LANDLOCKED URBANISM: POSTCOLONIAL AGGLOMERATIONS WITHOUT EXIT

The condition of Almaty as a landlocked agglomeration extends beyond local topography. The term landlocked should be understood here not only in a geographical sense — land without maritime access or a basin city encircled by mountains — but also as a form of logistical and infrastructural isolation that generates persistent ecological and social traps. Constrained resource circulation, limited transport integration with external economic nodes, and historically embedded transport geometries impose distinctive limits on development trajectories.

Comparative cases reveal shared structural patterns. Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, lies in a valley bordered by mountains and desert plateaus; winter temperature inversions combined with heavy coal-based heating produce extreme PM2.5 concentrations, while the city’s infrastructure struggles to distribute resources and mobility flows effectively. Mexico City represents a classic instance of the “basin effect”: a high-altitude urban valley surrounded by volcanic formations, where restricted air circulation and dense transport networks intensify the local accumulation of pollutants, generating chronic ecological and social pressures.

Los Angeles also demonstrates the basin effect and is instructive in this context. Its development has been shaped not only by natural constraints but also by expansive capitalist and migratory flows, producing a complex infrastructural network segmented along social and economic lines (Graham & Marvin 2001)[xv]. Although Los Angeles is not a postcolonial capital, its basin morphology and historical expansion provide a useful analogue for examining the mechanics of landlocked urbanism through the lens of infrastructural inertia.

Additional comparable examples can be identified among postcolonial and continentally isolated agglomerations where the convergence of topographic enclosure, infrastructural path dependency, and socio-economic reliance generates systemic ecological and urban challenges. Quito (Ecuador), situated in a basin at elevations exceeding 2,800 meters, combines colonial spatial legacies with constrained air circulation and heating pressures. Tehran (Iran), partially enclosed by mountain ranges, exhibits historically entrenched transport nodes and persistent smog burdens. Kathmandu (Nepal), located within a basin and experiencing rapid demographic growth without commensurate transport infrastructure, remains geologically predisposed to the accumulation of airborne pollution.

Landlocked agglomerations, therefore, represent more than a geographic condition; they constitute socio-infrastructural formations in which cities become effectively “locked” into historically entrenched trajectories. Topographic constraints, logistical dependencies, and institutional continuities combine to generate durable ecological traps. Urban foundations laid in one epoch acquire burdensome meanings in subsequent periods, manifesting as infrastructural inertia accompanied by quasi-cultural forms of resistance to transformation and the intensification of environmental stress across metropolitan regions.

PROJECT SECTION: REALISTIC SCENARIOS INSTEAD OF FUTUROLOGY

Addressing Almaty’s smog requires a systemic approach grounded in infrastructural reconfiguration rather than in speculative techno-futurist narratives — whether magical smog-collecting devices, diamond-producing filters, or megastructures designed to disperse artificial moisture fronts. Within this framework, three levels of intervention can be articulated: Immediate, Structural, and a Speculative Appendix, each corresponding to distinct planning horizons and fiscal realities.

The Immediate block (0–5 years) prioritizes rapid reductions in emissions and the redistribution of transport flows through the development of an alternative radial suburban railway network. A passenger system extending 100–150 kilometers with five principal spokes — Targap, the Kurti Pass, Bakanas, Chingildy, and Chilik — would integrate major settlements along the corridor. Complementing this, four tunnel-based connections toward adjacent regions of Kyrgyzstan via Turgen, Talgar, Kaskelen, and Uzunagach would expand cross-border mobility and logistical capacity. Such measures would not only alleviate pendular commuter pressures on agglomeration highways but also reshape freight logistics, redistributing transit flows and easing congestion within the urban core. By integrating existing rail corridors and nodal infrastructures, capital expenditures could be moderated while emissions decline and transport concentration in central districts is reduced.

Simultaneously, energy interventions must intensify the deployment of clean and accessible heating systems for private-sector housing, supported by state-backed price regulation and subsidy mechanisms. This approach would reduce dependence on coal- and wood-fired stoves and, in some cases, on the burning of livestock manure used as a low-cost alternative fuel in agricultural regions. State subsidies directed toward waste-to-energy initiatives based on livestock byproducts could stimulate regional economic diversification while fostering new industrial sectors. Increased energy and industrial autonomy at the household and community level would serve as a starting point for broader social and structural recalibration.

The Structural block (5–15 years) encompasses medium-term strategies aimed at strengthening regional transport autonomy and ecological resilience. These include the construction of regional railway rings linking suburban axes and major transport nodes, thereby decentralizing mobility and establishing alternative routes for both passenger and freight flows. Transit corridors beyond central arteries should incorporate bypass infrastructure for heavy cargo, reduce intersections between transit logistics and residential networks, and minimize localized pollution burdens. Parallel to this, the implementation of intelligent transport management systems would allow for coordinated scheduling and dynamic optimization of heavily used routes. Together, these measures form a structural platform for long-term urban reconfiguration, mitigating path dependency and reducing systemic concentrations of pollution.

The Speculative Appendix — conceived as a conceptual exercise rather than immediate policy — engages with futurist scenarios as intellectual tools capable of stimulating new design paradigms in transport and energy systems. Data-driven models integrating emissions, population density, and energy consumption could simulate potential pathways toward an “ecological balance” for the agglomeration. Speculative projects thus function as strategic thought experiments, illuminating both the constraints and latent capacities embedded within existing infrastructure, while remaining explicitly distinct from operational planning frameworks.

This tripartite strategy demonstrates how systemic infrastructural reconfiguration, grounded in local, interregional, and cross-border linkages, could transform a landlocked and path-dependent agglomeration into a resilient and adaptive network less constrained by historical and geopolitical limitations. By combining ecological efficiency, social decentralization, and economic autonomy, it outlines a pragmatic scenario in which cities cease to function as traps of their own infrastructural memory.

[i] Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Verso books, London-New York, Keller Easterling (2014)

[ii] Social Power and the Urbanization of Water, Oxford University Press Inc., Erik Swyngedouw (2004)

[iii] Risk Society Towards a New Modernity, Ulrich Beck (1992)

[iv]
[v] Social Power and the Urbanization of Water, Oxford University Press Inc., Erik Swyngedouw (2004)

[vi] Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. Psychology Press, Hove. Graham S. and Marvin S. (2001)

[vii] Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics Cambridge, MA: Harvard, Timothy Morton (2007)

[viii] The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, Peter Hopkirk (1992)

[ix] Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-economy, Anthony King (2016)

[x] Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Verso books, London-New York, Keller Easterling (2014)

[xi] Path dependence, its critics and the quest for ‘historical economics, All Souls College, Oxford & Stanford University, Paul A. David (2000)

[xii] Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, Univ. of Michigan Press, W. Brian Arthur (1994)

[xiii] The Scapegoat. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Ren; Girard (1986)

[xiv] Risk Society Towards a New Modernity, Ulrich Beck (1992)

[xv] Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. Psychology Press, Hove. Graham S. and Marvin S. (2001)