10 Countries Where The Capital Isn’t The City That You’d Expect

Along with Naypyidaw, there are several other countries in the world whose governments have upped sticks and built a new city from scratch. Whilst each of these might’ve been designed with effective governance and 20th century infrastructure in mind, they have seemingly all struggled to properly supersede their predecessors – Lagos in Nigeria and Karachi in Pakistan still dwarf Abuja and Islamabad (massively in the case of the latter – with 92 million people in the metropolitan area versus 8 million) even 30-60 years after their respective constructions, for example.

Given the cultural prominence of Rio De Janeiro (home to the world famous Christ the Redeemer statue, Copacabana beach and Carnival) and sheer size of Sao Paulo (the largest city in the Western hemisphere, with three million more people than second placed London), Brasilia in Brazil sticks out like a sore thumb, not only for its lack of prominence in comparison to the two aforementioned cities but also because of how it massively eclipses its surrounding areas (some of Brazil’s poorest) in terms of quality of infrastructure and services.

These attributes did attract huge swathes of people after the city opened up following its 41 month construction in the 1950s, but without the character (or favelas) of Rio, it has faced criticism as a soulless substitute and few without knowledge of the country or a strong general grasp of world geography would probably be able to name it if prompted.