This modern urban zone is comprised of glass and steel skyscrapers, a giant shopping mall, convention centre and office parks that house Fortune 500 corporate offices and global hotel chains.

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Until the XV century, Otrar, together with the rest of the Great Ortar Oasis, represented the main urban centre on the marginal zone between southern towns and northern steppes, between settlers and nomads of Central Asia.

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The plan is to transform the area into a huge mixed-use development zone, which will include the largest urban park built in Europe in the last 150 years, and then use revenue from home sales rents to pay for the land purchase.

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Urban lore long suggested that Hoffa was buried around the end zone at the former Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

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The urban landscape depicted by Paul Theroux in his classic 1986 novel O-Zone, where the rich live in artificial "green" enclaves protected by private corporate armies from the environmentally devastated areas surrounding them that are populated by the rest, will soon move from fiction to fact.

BBC: NEWS | In Depth | Viewpoints: The urban world in 2050