Georgia's Rustavi: Heading from Bust to Boom?

Once the industrial capital of Georgia, Rustavi, built in 1948 to house workers at the sprawling Rustavi Metallurgical Factory, has been particularly hard hit by the economic depression that engulfed the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thousands of the town's estimated 160,000 residents left during the 1990s, when the factory ceased operations.

But officials say that that dark era in the city's past is now over. "It has started," said Zurab Melikishvili, governor of Kvemo Kartli, the southeastern Georgian region where Rustavi is located, in reference to the town's huge construction boom, new infrastructure projects and recent privatizations. "That is the most important [thing]