National capitals won’t stay still!

Among recent news which has sparked our interest here at Collins Geo is the latest suggestion that the great city of Tehran might be replaced as Iran’s national capital. It is worryingly vulnerable to earthquakes, though there could be deeper political motivations too. It will be interesting - and of course vital - for us to watch that space. We don’t know what will happen yet.

.................................................... >>>>>>>...>>>...>>>>>>>>>Map from the Times Concise Atlas of the World

But if Iran does move the functions of its capital to either another town, or to a new site entirely, it will be just the latest in quite a series of these moves seen in modern times all across the world. Without wishing to produce a full catalogue of these things here - undoubtedly some well-known web sites do that very thoroughly already, and we have visited them all intimately from our fastnesses in Edinburgh and Bishopbriggs - it’s quite easy for me to recall many suggestions to move a national capital during my career, from Argentina quite a while ago (what ever happened to Viedma anyway?), to South Korea quite recently. Some time between those two proposals Nigeria did actually do it, depriving Lagos of the crown and giving it to somewhere called Abuja - while what we used to call the Ivory Coast decided that its president’s home village of Yamoussoukro would be a better choice than Abidjan. That was partly because it’s much more central to the country - but mostly, one feels, personal reasons came into it. Then there was the case of the tiny island nation of Palau: it hopped its capital over to a different island not long ago, although it felt to us map-watchers as if it was taking an unconscionable time a-doing it. So this issue has cropped up quite often, it seems to me. (I hasten to add that I am not the office junior any more).

Meanwhile in Malaysia a new capital (Putrajaya) has been under development for some years and will eventually replace Kuala Lumpur entirely; and similarly, Sri Lanka moved a lot of its government functions out of Colombo proper to the outlying town of Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte (also spelt in various other ways). The dramatic and puzzling case of Myanmar’s new jungle-centred capital of Nay Pyi Taw (also subject to debate as to its best spelling, leave alone its meaning - or even its reason for existence!) was probably the one that has been uppermost in our minds as cartographers and geodata people in recent years.

Some of us are old enough to remember (as kids) when Brasília was carved out of another site in the jungle, but not so old that we can remember Canberra being planted in similarly unpopulated vegetation just after the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet it seems no time ago to me that Tanzania’s government decided to move over to Dodoma, again in more or less empty space - though whether Dar really remains the real capital in all but name remains open to the jury. These greenfield sites are popular because the authorities have a clean slate. Though maybe we had better call them greentree sites.

Brasilia © ostill used under licence of shutterstock.com, from Collins The World's Heritage.

Possibly not many trees will need to be demolished in Iran, however, as they weren’t when its near neighbour Kazakhstan shifted its capital rather suddenly from Alma-Ata (now spelt Almaty) to a pretty dry existing town that became known as Astana. That for one was not a greenfield site, in any sense.

We can scarcely forget Berlin, either, of course - a timely matter around the twentieth anniversary of the demise of The Wall. Bonn was probably always a bit of a compromise candidate anyway; and of course East Berlin always was the capital of East Germany. But once Germany was united again in 1990, it led not long afterwards to Berlin’s full resumption of the laurels, as a sort of triumphant seal on the whole process, telling the world that normality had returned.

OK, I said it wasn’t going to be a catalogue of capital changes, and I daresay it isn’t. If you feel you must point out the ones I allowed to get away, please do so. But even if I forgot a few, it’s surprising how news of one case brings memories of so many others out of the woodwork.

As for joint capitals, and arguments over what’s the capital really - well, don’t get me started…..!

Roger Pountain, Senior Information Analyst, Collins Geo