It is a rare occasion when a meeting of the Almaty Mayor with the city folks happens without emotional explosion in social networks

Our society developed a new local custom – each meeting of Almaty Mayor with the city folks triggers yammers, not royal ones, but still – rather scandalous.  The Mayor ignores questions or, at all, behaves himself rudely.  The general attitude shown by Almaty social networks community in regards to Mr. Dosayev is as follows – “He don’s respect us, we don’t respect him”.

At the latest meeting with the population of the Auezov District of Almaty, Dosayev outperformed his own self.  First of all, he acquired himself a new alias.  Secondly, he replenished the local thesaurus with a new term – “Studism”.

Demolish Mayor, Not the Huts

A wave of agitation in social networks came after Mayor’s words about readiness to demolish Almaty estates, built in the times of USSR.

ALEM RESEARCH explored the Mass Media and social networks and revealed that those particular words were the ones that exploded the Almaty sector of global cyber-space.  In three days, level of involvement shown by audience in response to “Mayor Dosayev and Estates” was in excess to 6000.  That is not an often phenomenon, even when far more hotter news emerge.

Most popular were posts offering to “demolish the Mayor, not those huts”.  The most furious demolishers were women. 

The “Demolish the Mayor” slogan did not come out without reasons.  Internet users reminded Dosayev of the Year 2013, when the Almaty community of women on maternity leave demolished the Minister of Social Protection – Serik Abdenov.  The latter individual forever remained in the memory of the people as “Mr. Just Cause” (situation when Abdenov failed to give adequate answer to a question from audience).  Also, said individual is remembered as the initiator of the draft law, by which the government would cut maternity leave allowances by two times.  After pregnant women went out on mass protests, the government cancelled that initiative and sacked Abdenov.  After that, Mr. Abdenov became a political ghost. 

Since that time, those pregnant protesters gave birth to new citizens.  Many of them domicile in the discussed estates.  They communicated to the Mayor, that if he did not “get real”, they would have an attack of nostalgia about the times of their glory and repeat the act of demolishment. 

You Don’t Hammer on Stud

That story became a caution tale for present-day public servants.  The latter understood, that prior to saying something, they should brainstorm about consequences and implications.  As for Mayor Dosayev, he exposed himself like an amateur.

His argument was that those estates had been built back in the 60-70s of the 20^th century, which means they were supposed to collapse in early 2000-s.  He said those houses were so old, that it was impossible to “hammer a stud into the wall”. Nevertheless, those estates are still there, and look quite firm as they are – contrary to modern fancy houses that tend to start looking ramshackle in one year.  Pregnant mothers addressed civil construction experts, who explained that studs were not things to be hammered into the wall.  Studs are supposed to be screwed into a drilled hole on a wall.  If the Mayor meant, that it was impossible to drill a hole for them studs, then it was only because those concrete walls only got harder in the course of time. 

In the result of above discussions about “studs and hammer”, Almaty folks produced a new mem – “Studism of the Mayor”. 

Questions and Versions

Almaty folks took Mayor’s words seriously – as if it was an official executive decision.  Internet community started asking questions, based on which one could make conclusions about things that cause anxiety among Almaty folks. 

• What criteria will the Mayor apply, while calculating sums of compensations payable to residents of the “to-be-demolished” estates.
• Can the city, at all, afford, such an ambition.
• Where will dwellers be relocated.
• If those will be new houses built on sites of old houses, how much time will they have to wait and who will pay the cost of rent, while they wait on their future new houses.
• If they plan to relocate dwellers to public welfare houses located in the outskirts of Almaty, people are in disagreement to that – those houses are made of cards and always are criticized.
• Where will they relocate those numerous little tiny convenience stores, pharmacies, beauty-saloons and other service providers with their clienteles.  Those minor businesses will incur in tremendous losses and damage, because of relocation.
• Who are those people bragging about “lack of civilization in estates” that the Mayor referred to, while assuring the audience that his only concern was “welfare of the people”.
• And the final concern – previous Almaty Mayors invested billions into improvement and modernization of those estates.  Which means, those billions will be wasted in vein.  Which, also, means, death to all trees and vegetation that those estates have in abundance

That was particular when the Mayor’s press-service should have shown some real respect to people – tear its “rear” off its cozy chair and go face the masses, explaining, clarifying and trying to convert people’s fury into something constructive. That did not happen – as usual, the press-service maintained the regime of radio and cyber silence.  In the result of that, Almaty folks developed a number of conspiracy theories. 

Almaty folks answered the question why would the Mayor want to demolish old-Soviet estates with their 4 to 5-level apartment blocks and vast courts with abundant vegetation.  For the sake of erecting thousands of “Human Ant-Hives”.  Almaty folks, also, put forward a suspicion that the Mayor was lobbying the interests of real-estate developers. 

Ellipsis

But if to sweep away humor, sarcasm and protesting slogans present in posts, we could see something very constructive.  Those old houses do need renovation.  One of Internet users wrote that if to use old Soviet construction regulations, those houses are supposed to undergo some specific repairs and replacement of old communications every 30 years.  This is it, no demolishment is necessary.

Another Internet-user, who appears to be a construction expert, wrote that many countries have extensive experience from successful renovation of old prefabricated houses (Almaty estates are comprised of those prefabricated houses).  As for the Office of Almaty Mayor, they has an odd interpretation of the term “renovation”.  Whey you renovate prefabricated estates, you can consider demolishment only if a house is an obvious ramshackle, decomposing into fragments before your eyes.  Anywhere in the world, they renovate old houses, including their communications, stairways and exteriors, thus preserving the historic outlooks and the local urban microcosm.

Also, the internet community put forward a number of recommendations that the “Stud” could pay attention to, for example:

A special commission must study each house individually and carefully.  Once a “decomposing” house is revealed, that very house needs to be demolished, but not the whole neighborhood

As an ellipsis, we can take another comment made by Almaty folks:

“Remind us of promises our Mayor fulfilled?  For example, where are those 300 buses he promised?”

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Conclusions made by ALEM RESEARCH are based on information received from open sources – governmental and other web-sites, Mass Media and social networks. 

ALEM RESEARCH does not assume responsibility for any information or data from those sources, as well as consequences of the use of the same by the audience.