A couple of days ago I created a new Pinterest Board to pin various interesting images of Georgia I find on the internet. I've managed to pin only one photo depicting a brand-new building of border checkpoint in Sapri on the Georgian-Turkish border, and all of a sudden this pic has been repinned to the Board entitled "Cool stuff". It seems that this user is not so much interested in Caucasian politics and culture, but this piece of art looked looked so appealing and awesome. The girl maybe has never ever heard about the independent state of Georgia, but this image made her to learn more.
Indeed, the attention-grabbing architecture is a way how to promote your country abroad and boost your international visibility, which in the end will result in increased number of tourists and foreign business willing to invest. Sure, this is just one component of the state branding strategy, but it nevertheless important.
This rapid urban development and modern architecture projects even made Georgia on the cover of the Australian architecture magazine "Mark", not to mention numerous articles and blog entries on the same topic - modernisation of Georgia through architecture.
Although it is still unclear for me where the money goes from, but you cannot disagree that investment in infrastructure is an investment into your future, along with the education. Georgia is now projecting two images to the outside world - 1) top reformist, forward-looking & least corrupt country in the whole region, and 2) regional hub for logistics and trade. This new re-branding (from "beacon of democracy") will not only be instrumental in boosting international image of Georgia, but will also be very much helpful in conflict resolution as every single person living in the separatist regions (excluding corrupt officials, Russian generals, chekists and mafia) will be asking the same question: "Why don't we have the same (buildings, infrastructure, transparent governance etc)?"
For those who read in Russian, I very much recommend to read short memoirs of a Russian prisoner of war during the WWII:
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