Author: Aruzhan Daribai
Mentor: Anatoly Ivanov-Weiskopf
Deserted streets, shuttered factories, and abandoned homes — this is the reality of many of Kazakhstan’s monotowns today. Once thriving industrial hubs that attracted thousands of workers and specialists, these towns have gradually declined as the backbone enterprises collapsed. As a result, people began leaving en masse in search of a better life elsewhere. According to official statistics, the population of monotowns continues to decline year after year.
Can this process be reversed? Aruzhan Daribai from Tengrinews.kz visited some of Kazakhstan’s ghost towns to explore whether — and how — life can be brought back to these places.
*The original article is written in Russian
You can read the full article, prepared by a resident of the project, at the following link: https://tengrinews.kz/article/pusteyuschie-ulitsyi-tishina-zavodov-proishodit-monogorodami-2822/