Editing Ashgabat (section)

==Geography==
Ashgabat is in near proximity, approximately 50&nbsp;km (30&nbsp;mi), to the Iranian border.<ref name=nasa>{{cite web|url=https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/38300/ashgabat-turkmenistan|title=Ashgabat, Turkmenistan|date=September 11, 2001|publisher=NASA}}</ref> It occupies a highly seismically active oasis plain bounded on the south by the foothills of the [[Kopet Dag]] mountains ({{langx|tk|Köpetdag}}) and on the north by the [[Karakum Desert]]. It is surrounded by, but not part of, [[Ahal Region|Ahal Province]] ({{langx|tk|Ahal welaýaty}}). The highest point in the city is the {{convert|401|m}} high sandhill upon which the Yyldyz Hotel was built, but most of the city lies between {{convert|200.|and|255|m}} of elevation. The [[Karakum Canal]] runs through the city.<ref name=goranmak>{{cite map|title=Ashgabat: Map of City Centre|publisher=Enterprise No. 5 of the Ministry of Defense|place=Ashgabat|date=2015}}</ref><ref name=genshtab>{{cite map |title = Ашхабад|trans-title = Ashkhabad|year = 1982|scale = 1:25,000|series = Генеральный штаб|publisher = Генеральный штаб СССР|sections = J-40-69,70,81,82|edition = 1969|language = ru}}</ref><ref name=encyclopedia />

Like the rest of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat's soil is primarily sediment that accumulated on the bottom of the [[Paratethys Ocean]]. The Kopet Dag mountains emerged toward the end of the [[Cretaceous Period]].<ref name=turkmenistan2>{{cite book|title=Туркменистан|language=ru|date=1948|publisher=Молодая гвардия|place=Moscow|series=Наша Родина|editor-last=Михайлова|editor-first=Н.Н.|chapter=Туркменистан в образах литературы}}</ref>

===Urban layout===
====1881 to 1929====
Prior to 1881 any buildings other than [[yurt]]s were made solely from [[adobe]] and were limited to one story in height due to the seismic risk.<ref name=ria /> As of 1900 only one building in the city was two stories tall, the municipal museum.<ref name=muradov3>{{cite news|url= https://turkmenistan.gov.tm/ru/post/54091/istoriya-ashhabada-na-zare-dvadcatogo-veka |title=  История Ашхабада: на заре двадцатого века|first=Ruslan|last=Muradov |date=6 May 2021 |language=ru |publisher=«Туркменистан: золотой век»}}</ref> City planning began following the Russian conquest, with "very simple planning schemes". The basic layout of downtown streets "has been preserved to this day and defined the unique character of the city structure combining linear and radial types of layout of blocks". The Russian writer [[Vasily Yan]], who lived in Askhabad from 1901 to 1904, described the city as "a little tidy town consisting of numerous clay houses, surrounded by fruit gardens with straight streets, planted with slim cottonwood, chestnut, and white acacia planned by the hand of military engineers".<ref name=guide /> Another description noted,
: The fortress was the center of the bureaucratic part of the city. Here stood especially sturdy thick-walled houses, with strong window grates and corner buttresses. Earthquakes were less frightening in such houses, and behind the thick walls even in the hottest months some measure of indoor coolness was retained. Each house had a garden around it, on maintenance of which residents spared neither expenditures nor water...Nearer the rail station lived the railroad workers and craftsmen. Here the houses were shorter and more densely spaced, gardens smaller, and dust on the streets greater...
: Gradually a third center of Ashkhabad started to emerge, of the merchants. Roughly equidistant from the rail station and the fortress was laid out a sad marketplace, becoming not only a center of stores and stalls, but a center of gravity for merchants' residence.<ref name=turkmenistan />

====1930 to 1948====
In 1930, asphalt was used for the first time to pave Ashgabat's streets.<ref name=muradov4>{{cite news|url=https://turkmenistan.gov.tm/ru/post/54304/istoriya-ashhabada-vremya-bolshih-peremen |title =История Ашхабада: время больших перемен  |date=13 May 2021|first=Ruslan|last=Muradov |language=ru |publisher=«Туркменистан: золотой век»}}</ref> The water supply was increased by piping water from springs in neighboring Gämi and Bagyr.<ref name=muradov4 />

The first master plan for Ashgabat, developed between 1935 and 1937 at the Moscow Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Imagery, and Cartography, envisioned expansion to the west, including irrigation and greening of the Bikrova canyon (today Bekrewe).<ref name=encyclopedia>{{cite book|title=Туркменская Советская Социалистическая Республика: Энциклопедический справочник|date=1984|publisher=Издательство Чувашского обкома КПСС|place=Ashkhabad|language = ru}}</ref> The city architect's office was created in 1936 but was unable to implement the new master plan "as it implied significant demolition of the existing buildings".<ref name=quake>{{cite web|url=http://turkmenistan.gov.tm/?id=17263|title=Ашхабадская трагедия: 70 лет спустя|last=Komarov|first=Vladimir|date=October 6, 2018|work=Туркменистан: золотой век|language=ru}}</ref> A description of Ashgabat published in 1948 just before the earthquake noted, "In Ashgabat there are nearly no tall buildings, thus every two-story building is visible from above...", i.e., from the foothills. The tallest structures were the clock tower of the textile mill, the "round smokestack of the glass factory", two "exceptionally thin minarets" of the "former mosque", and "two splendid towers over the long building of the main city hotel".<ref name=turkmenistan />

====Impact of the 1948 earthquake====
[[File:Soviet Union stamp 1950 № 1493.jpg|thumb|Textile factory in Ashgabat depicted on a 1950 stamp]]
During the 1948 earthquake, since the bulk of Ashgabat at that time was built of either [[adobe]] or fired [[brick]], all but a very few buildings collapsed or were damaged beyond repair (the reinforced concrete grain elevator, [[St. Alexander Nevsky Church, Ashgabat|Church of St. Alexander Nevsky]], and [[Kärz Bank]] were among the structures that survived).<ref name=vosp>{{cite web|url=https://www.partner-inform.de/memoirs/detail/jetapy-zhiznennogo-puti-chast-6-g/4/620?lang=ru|title=ЭТАПЫ ЖИЗНЕННОГО ПУТИ, Часть 6. ТУРКМЕНИЯ|first=Михаил|last=Брегман|language=ru|publisher="Partner" MedienHaus GmbH & Co. KG}}</ref><ref name=karyyev>{{cite web|url=http://infoabad.com/vs-o-turkmenistane/-ashhabadskaja-katastrofa-glava-iz-knigi-b-karyeva-vot-prishlo-zemletrjasenie.html|title="Ашхабадская катастрофа". Глава из книги Б.Каррыева "Вот пришло землетрясение"|date=September 6, 2015|language=ru|publisher=Infoabad|access-date=July 26, 2020|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726231339/http://infoabad.com/vs-o-turkmenistane/-ashhabadskaja-katastrofa-glava-iz-knigi-b-karyeva-vot-prishlo-zemletrjasenie.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> According to Turkmenistan's official news agency,
: Nearly all one-story residential buildings in the city made of mud brick were destroyed, 95 percent of all one-story buildings made of fired brick, and the remaining structures were damaged beyond repair. The number of inhabitable buildings was in single digits, and at that, only after capital renovation.<ref name=quake />

A new general plan was hastily developed by July 1949. The city was divided into four zones: central, northern, eastern, and southwestern. Reconstruction of the city began in that year.<ref name=encyclopedia /><ref name=quake /> Thus from the early 1950s through 1991 Ashgabat's skyline was dominated by [[Brutalist architecture|the Brutalist Style]] favored by post-Stalin Soviet architects.<ref name=masterplan>{{cite web|url=http://turkmenistan.gov.tm/?id=5241|title=Столица, устремленная в будущее|first=Vladimir|last=Komarov|date=November 9, 2013|language=ru|work=Туркменистан: золотой век}}</ref> The city's central avenue, [[Magtymguly Avenue|Magtymguly]] (former Kuropatkin, Freedom, and Stalin Avenue), featured "monotonous and primarily two-story construction of administrative and residential buildings". This reconstruction "preserved the existing network of city streets as it was economically unjustified to redesign them".<ref name=quake /> The city was described as "...a Communist-era backwater, rebuilt into a typically drab provincial Soviet city..."<ref name=mt>{{cite web|url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2011/05/19/turkmen-leader-opens-gold-palace-a7060|title=Turkmen Leader Opens Gold Palace|date=May 19, 2011|publisher=Moscow Times}}</ref> The plan was updated in 1959.<ref name=bse>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://bse.slovaronline.com/2178-ASHHABAD |title=Большая советская энциклопедия |edition=1969-1978гг. – Издание III|place=Moscow |language=Russian |article=АШХАБАД}} (online edition)</ref>

Among the buildings erected in the 1950s and 1960s were the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Turkmenistan Communist Party, the Council of Ministers Building, the [[Mollanepes Academic Drama Theater]], the former [[Ashkhabad Hotel]] (now renamed Paytagt), the Academy of Sciences complex, and the downtown library building. On then-Karl Marx Square stood a monument to the Soviet "fighters for victory of Soviet power in Turkmenistan".<ref name=encyclopedia />

====The 1960s master plan====
The Turkmen State Project Institute undertook a feasibility study in the mid-1960s to forecast Ashgabat's development to the year 2000, and on that basis to develop a new master plan. Up until then the city had largely expanded to the east, but now the plan called for development to the south and west. This plan was used for about 20 years, and led to construction of the city's first four-story apartment buildings in the Howdan ({{langx|ru|Гаудан}}) microdistricts, formerly the site of the Ashgabat-South aerodrome, as well as annexation of three [[Kolkhoz|collective farms]] in the near suburbs and their conversion into residential neighborhoods, one of which, Leningrad kolkhoz, to this day is referred to informally by its former name.<ref name=quake /><ref name=osmwiki>{{cite web|url=https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ashgabat#Demolished_neighborhoods|title=Ashgabat|publisher=OpenStreetMap}}</ref> The plan was reworked in 1974, and this resulted in relocation of several industrial plants away from the city center, and thus creation of the industrial zones to the northwest, south, southeast, and northeast.<ref name=encyclopedia />

Between 1961 and 1987 the city architect was Abdulla Ahmedov, who introduced Soviet [[modernism]] to Ashgabat.<ref name=muradov5>{{cite news|url=https://turkmenistan.gov.tm/ru/post/54624/istoriya-ashhabada-epoha-modernizma | title=История Ашхабада: эпоха модернизма | date=24 May 2021 |language=ru |first=Ruslan |last=Muradov |publisher=«Туркменистан: золотой век»}}</ref> Ahmedov's greatest architectural accomplishment during this period is considered the Ashgabat Hotel (today renamed Paytagt Hotel), built between 1964 and 1970, "a harmonious synthesis of architecture and monumental art".<ref name=muradov5 />

===Growth===
In 1948 Ashgabat was described before the earthquake as lying "on a sloping plain of the Kopet-Dag foothills, stretching seven kilometers from west to east and five kilometers from the railroad right-of-way to the south, in the direction of the mountains".<ref name=turkmenistan>{{cite book|title=Туркменистан|language=ru|first=П.|last=Скосырев|date=1948|publisher=Молодая гвардия|place=Moscow|series=Наша Родина|editor-last=Михайлова|editor-first=Н.Н.|chapter=Ашхабад--столица Советского Туркменистана}}</ref> Through the mid-1970s, Ashgabat was a compact city, as shown by the 1974 Soviet military's General Staff map J-40-081.<ref name=j40081>{{cite map|title=Ашхабад J-40-081|cartography=USSR Ministry of Defense|url=https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:J-40-081-Ashgabat-excerpt.jpg|language=ru}}</ref> The village of Köşi, collective farm "Leningrad", airport, and suburbs to the north were outside the city limits.

Beginning in the 1970s, Ashgabat's boundaries shifted outward, with the aforementioned municipalities annexed, the aerodrome at Howdan redeveloped, and creation of the Parahat ({{langx|ru|Mir}}) neighborhoods to the south and industrial parks to the east. In 2013, Ashgabat annexed a portion of the then-Ruhabat district of Ahal Province as well as the city of Abadan (previously named Büzmeýin, and renamed that as a neighborhood) plus all land and villages in between. The southern boundary of Ashgabat was extended southward to the foothills of the Kopet Dag mountains. Overall, Ashgabat's land area rose by 37,654 hectares. The following municipalities were abolished due to their incorporation into the city of Ashgabat: city of Abadan, towns of Jülge and Ruhabat, villages of Gökje, Gypjak, Birleşik, Magaryf, Herrikgala, Ýalkym, Gurtly, Hellewler, Ylmy-Tejribe bazasy, Ýasmansalyk, Köne Gurtly, Gulantäzekli, Serdar ýoly, Gaňtar, Gyzyljagala, Inerçýage, Tarhan, Topurly, and Ussagulla.<ref name=abadan2013>{{cite map|title=Схема территорий, предназначенных для включения в пределы города Aшхабада|language=ru|url=https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:2013May27_new_map_of_Ashgabat_and_Akhal_2.jpg|date=May 27, 2013}}</ref><ref name=annex2013a>{{cite web|url=http://www.turkmeninform.com/ru/news/20130528/07457.html|title=Изменения в административной карте столицы Туркменистана и ее прилегающих территорий|date=May 28, 2013|language=ru|work= Туркменистан: золотой век}}</ref><ref name=annex2013b>{{cite web|url=http://www.turkmeninform.com/ru/news/20130528/07457.html|title=Изменения в административной карте столицы Туркменистана и ее прилегающих территорий|date=May 28, 2013|language=ru|publisher=Turkmeninform}}</ref> A further expansion occurred January 5, 2018, when additional land to the north was annexed, incorporating the Gurtly Reservoir and two greenfield residential construction projects, known today as Täze Zaman. This statute also established the current four boroughs of Ashgabat.<ref name=annex2015>{{cite map|title=Схема территорий этрапов города Ашхабада|date=January 5, 2018|url=https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:2018_01_06_ashgabat_etrapy_separation_24784.jpg|language=ru}}</ref><ref name=mejlis1>{{cite web|url=http://turkmenistan.gov.tm/?id=15374|title=Меджлис Туркменистана принял Постановление о вопросах административно-территориального деления города Ашхабада|language=ru|date=January 5, 2018|work=Туркменистан: золотой век}}</ref>