The preparations for Expo-2017 include new development projects throughout the city, including a high-speed light rail and a luxury bus network. Hosting the international exposition (which has the theme "Future Energy") will cost Kazakhstan an estimated $1.5 billion, according to the Executive Secretary of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry and Expo-2017 commissioner Rapil Zhoshybayev. He added that the state did not expect to profit from the venture. "There is not much financial profit from this project," Zhoshybayev said in a statement to Kazakhstan-based publication Tengri News. "It is almost equal to the costs." He emphasized, however, that the exposition would increase the city's infrastructure, technology, and reputation, calling the venture a "big image project for Kazakhstan."

Astana has been the capital of Kazakhstan since 1997, when President Nursultan Nazarbayev moved the government away from its previous base in Almaty, the country's largest city. Since then, Astana's population has more than doubled to almost 800,000 -- a rapid increase that is a source of pride for the city's architects. "Only ten years ago, Astana was just an insignificant provincial town," said Amanzhol Chikanayev, one of the chief architects involved with city planning. "And now it's already being compared to Las Vegas." Despite the population boom, however, some critics maintain that the construction projects have been excessive: Astana's Central Concert Hall, for example, is one of the largest in the world, with a seating capacity of 3,500. Yevgeniy Zhovtis and others have pointed out that the even Astana's location has added to its enormous cost.

"In the middle of the steppe, there is nothing there to protect the city from wind or weather," said Zhovtis. "It's too hot in the summer, and too cold in the winter. So can you imagine how much it costs to heat and cool those government buildings with huge rooms and high ceilings? That money is coming from our budget, and it could have been used for our welfare."

Astana is widely recognized as a pet project of President Nazarbayev, who has closely overseen the city's development process. In an interview with CNN, former British politician Jonathan Aitken, who wrote a 2012 biography of Nazarbayev, described Kazakhstan's capital city as the personal creation of the president. "Just as Versailles and parts of Paris were all created by one man's vision, so too was Astana," he said. The president's involvement with the city's design was so detailed that one of the skyline's most recognizable monuments, the Bayterek Tower, was built based on a sketch that Nazarbayev drew on a napkin, said Chikanayev. The president's handprint literally overlooks the city; at the top of the tower, visitors can place their hands in a gold cast of the Navarbayev's hand, which is said to bring good luck.