Almaty
Birthplace of every apple on Earth (Malus sieversii confirmed by DNA), lost capital status in 1997 but kept 20% of GDP and 60% of bank credits — an octopus arm that kept processing after the head moved to Astana.
Every apple in every supermarket in the world traces its DNA to the forests surrounding this city. Almaty — formerly Alma-Ata, meaning 'father of apples' — sits in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains where snowmelt from the northern Tian Shan creates lush valleys in an otherwise arid Central Asian steppe. Malus sieversii, the wild ancestor of all domesticated apples, still grows in these forests, confirmed by DNA analysis in 2010 showing that 46% of the modern apple genome originates here. The city is consuming its own origin story: 90% of these wild apple forests have been destroyed since 1935 by urban expansion.
The Russian Empire established the military fortification of Verny ('faithful') at this site in 1854, exploiting the Silk Road waypoint position between China and the West. Devastating earthquakes in 1887 and 1911 destroyed most of the settlement, but the Soviets rebuilt it and designated it capital of the Kazakh SSR in 1929. For seventy years, Almaty served as both political and economic center of Kazakhstan. Then, in 1997, President Nazarbayev transferred the capital to Astana — officially because Almaty was earthquake-prone and space-constrained by mountains, strategically to consolidate control over the Russian-speaking northern regions far from Almaty's southern location near the Chinese border.
Losing capital status should have diminished Almaty. Instead, the city demonstrated the octopus principle: sever the political head, and the distributed neural network keeps processing independently. Almaty generates approximately 20% of Kazakhstan's GDP, holds 60% of the nation's bank credits, and houses 52% of its research personnel — all with roughly 10% of the population. Halyk Bank and Kaspi Bank, Central Asia's largest financial institutions, are headquartered here. The Kazakhstan Stock Exchange operates from Almaty, not Astana. Industrial production grew 14.1% in the first five months of 2025. The January 2022 'Bloody January' protests — 227 killed, $2-3 billion in damage concentrated in Almaty — revealed the tension between autonomous economic power and centralized political control.
Almaty's trajectory follows the Belt and Road Initiative, with China's border just 300 kilometers east. The city that gave the world its apples is now positioning itself as Central Asia's logistics and financial gateway — a role its Silk Road geography supported long before anyone drew a national border.