In 2005, Myanmar's government abruptly relocated the national capital 320 km inland from Yangon to a newly built city constructed almost from scratch in scrubland. What is this capital called?
- Mandalay
- Yangon
- Bago
- Naypyidaw
Why D? And why not the others?
Correct answer: D. Naypyidaw
Naypyidaw ('abode of kings') was built essentially from empty scrubland starting in 2002 and became Myanmar's official capital when the government relocated there in November 2005, complete with twenty-lane highways and government buildings spread across a footprint several times the size of Yangon — yet for years it remained strikingly under-populated relative to its planned capacity of roughly a million residents, with some of its multi-lane boulevards nearly empty of traffic. Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is the obvious trap, since it served as capital for over a century and remains the country's largest city and commercial centre, but it lost the official title in 2005. Mandalay is Myanmar's historic second city and a former royal capital of the 19th-century Konbaung dynasty, and Bago was an earlier capital centuries before that, but neither is the seat of government today.
Source: Britannica: Naypyidaw; Britannica: Myanmar (2005 capital relocation)