ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a theoretical framework that bridges urbanisation and decentralisation by focusing on urban planning and the role of local government in managing urban development. Urban planning can be one of the key decentralised activities of local governments to engage public and private actors in beneficial economic development. The national government of Kazakhstan assigned local governments the responsibility of urban planning, with the assumption that the presence of genplans would help city governments to manage urban development. However, local governments do not have in-house expert capacity to develop genplans. Therefore, local governments subcontract private companies through public procurement procedures. Constrained by national guidelines and unified norms, urban planning in Kazakhstan remains a back-room production of technical plans by external experts with limited involvement of citizens. The national legislation supersedes the power of local rules, not letting local governments regulate urban development and balance public and private interests. There is a budget to produce a genplan, but no specially allocated financial resources are available for its implementation. Consequently, the author provides evidence of how the Almaty City government used local plans to extend city borders at the expense of agricultural land of the Almaty Region.
