Cities and Economy
In 2005, 3.3 million people lived in the basin of the Lake Balkhash, including residents of Almaty – the largest city of Kazakhstan. The largest city on the lake is Balkhash with 66,724 inhabitants (2010). It is located on the northern shore and has a prominent Mining and Metallurgy Plant. A large copper deposit was discovered in the area in 1928–1930 and is being developed in the villages north of the lake. Part of the motorway between Bishkek and Karaganda runs along the western shore of the lake. Western shore also hosts military installations built during the Soviet era, such as radar missile warning systems. The southern shore is almost unpopulated and has only a few villages. Nature and wild life of the lake attract tourists, and there are several resorts on the lake.
Read more about this topic: Lake Balkhash
Famous quotes containing the words cities and/or economy:
“How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)