Arkalyk

Here's a description of Arkalyk from the town's home page:

The city is located in the steppe of central Kazakhstan and is surrounded by man-made hills of tailings, an immediate sign that this is a mining community. Like many other areas in Kazakhstan, the Arkalyk region is surrounded by natural resources. Trees are very rare and resources are not so obvious . . . there is coal underground and fish in the rivers.
Arkalyk suffers from its remote location, far from the centers of Kazakhstan, the airport is inoperative now and next large city is 15 hours away by train. The bauxite mining operation remains the city's largest employer of citizens even though the raw material is shipped to a different city for processing into aluminum.

A city of miners, of regional administrators, and people excited to live in a regional center. Perhaps it is like many cities in the former Soviet Union, with an identity crisis developed through the self-destruction of the communist state. But through the transition many people have remained, and the Arkalyk region is home to about 40,000 people.

Sometimes it becomes more pleasant to remember the role of the city in the past, the so-called "space port" of the Soviet/Russian space programs. Cosmonauts returning from their missions landed near Arkalyk, and special recovery teams would rush into the steppe and bring them to their hero's welcome in Arkalyk.
Not all of Arkalyk's good times are in the past. The people are real and continue to breathe life into the city and often speak of the past but continue to work as best they can for the future.