migration many russian cities have changed dramatically during the last two decades and sometimes it seems they sacrifice careful planning for the sake of striking at last so wouldn't it be wiser to take a look at some other cities experience and after all is it possible to make a city of millions comfortably for everybody here's the man who knows the director of cabin port advanced russian studies blair robel. sociologist say one of russia's worst problems is the concentration of people in a few metropolitan areas people from all over the country pouring in you know west of high wages and better life the big cities suffer as the gap between the rich and the pool grows and tensions between the immigrants and locals it gets worse when ethnic communities clash giving rise to nationalism and affecting public safety.

welcome to the show thank you thank you very much for being with us while you wrote a book on the silver age moscow and so i think it should be easier for you than for many other people maybe even easier for us muscovites to register the change that moscow has experienced well during the last well twenty fifteen years well what's your opinion on the way moscow is changing is it changing for the better for the worse are there more mistakes or more progress made well you know i actually think it's so complicated a city the size is so complex it's hard hard to say in some ways you mentioned so overage moscow in some ways moscow has returned to its overage character a commercial city an aggressive city a city with a great mix of people who are elbowing their way around and so in some ways this is a moscow existed before but of course the scale is different is ten times bigger so all the. become to become times bigger than it would have been

a hundred years ago so more or less so that's that's a huge qualitative difference what in terms of the moscow of the soviet union it's better whose worse in a sense there was top down planning that on one level was very effective but there were all sorts of problems with planning with supplies with the problem of population control what were called limits to keep people who would come in and so i think we tend to forget that there was a certain amount of disorder in soviet moscow as well but clearly there is aggressive spirit about moscow that's new and you see it in the cities when you when you talk about aggressive spirit what do you actually you mean just like a big city being aggressive two to two human beings or or even aggressiveness of people towards each other will i need a little bit of both i think there are people in this city this size in order to be

seen in order to protect yourself you have to be proactive yeah you can't just do you have to get you have to drive aggressively abdul if you don't get out of your way to get anywhere that's right and i think what we see in driving is exactly what we what we see in the city as a whole moscow want from being a very dark city to a city that's full of big signs and bright lights and that change is fundamental and for people for whom the norm was the moscow of the olympics this is all an assault but for people who think of moscow a comparison of places like london and new york and tokyo and maybe some other cities like south paulo and rio the the cities are the same size it's not so unusual moskos population has been growing steadily over the last fifty years and it still is really do you think it will be growing. a growing and

growing while limited while there is a limit to to a city's city's population in modern times when you know some specialist like to say that there is a limit or maybe there's a kind of ecological limit but if you take a look at cities like mexico city or sao paulo or mexico city these are cities were . twice as large as moscow thank you martin well some power is approaching thirty million if you think about regional not just the city but regional tokyo you're talking about twenty million people doing so so these are the most this population has doubled in my lifetime it used to be eight when i was a kid right sixteen right now on the subway so to think that there are undoubtedly there is some kind of limit but it's knowable exactly where it is and moscow has problems and it's russia's problem is everything is so centralize here that if if you really want to get something done you really need to be here this is where the money is and maybe there's no it's not exactly three percent of russia's money isn't most that's right so it's not like our keep growing i'm told there's money

elsewhere well let's hear more about it right now from spotlights he learned that the new that. the u.s. is so strictly regulated in movement of its citizens was far from easy for non muscovites to come and live in the capital the collapse of the soviet union open moscow to new comers the transition to a market economy meant more and more people coming to the capital in search of opportunities in no time moscow became the most populated capital in. the city's infrastructure housing and traffic when and when not ready for the change moscow only has homes for about nine million people while the nesta made it fifteen me then current through it in this city it's been asked demanded that muscovites needs some one million more rooms in order for their living conditions to become comfortable no less than three thousand new cars during moscow's traffic every year rush hour one can see thirty two food to kill. jams as

a result and parking is sometimes even more of a headache and moving around the city is the number of parking spaces this hopwood what is needed twenty years ago the city planners could not in dissipate such explosive urban room even with new roads and houses being built in most schools the gap between demand and supply is still considered. when we say growing today. as far as i understand my feeling is that is that moscow population is growing because of migrants especially from the from the poor country in central asia. will it continue to go. to be the tendency well i think if the economy grows margaret will come here i mean there are two issues there labor related issues one is that migrants go where jobs are. and because that's what it's about it's about working and it's also must go economy keeps growing you need labor

and at the same time the russian population they don't want to cheap labor and i think it was a blue collar i don't you know hala jobs and demographically the russian population is shrinking so i think in the foreseeable future five to ten years here will be more i think there were so will be more immigrants coming to moscow and that and that's the challenge everywhere after thirty million we think this is not so i don't i don't know probably not probably not that much but but you're already as you said fifteen sixteen million. well russian population in general in the country as you said which is pretty centralized is mostly. concentrated in a few urban centers yes well and these are been centers and in moscow life is becoming pretty uncomfortable so do you think that the process of decentralization of the middle class first of all moving out of big cities to do more comfortable. and lou larry's will will start naturally or are we need like

a government decision for that well i think history has shown that governments are very bad telling people where to live and ultimately it doesn't work so i don't i styling stella was the idea and i think this country has some examples of that but i think what's interesting is if we're having this conversation say fifteen years ago we would say well there's a middle class in moscow and the world's now there's a visible middle class in many russian cities and not just moscow st petersburg you katherine bergen and so on and so forth so i think if if there were real jobs that exist for a professional middle class in other cities we would see some distribution but what's really interesting about what's happening here is there was an expectation of people would move to the suburbs where it became possible but hasn't happened instead people by their doctors are a second allow second home and they say keep their they keep living in the city and

going to the doctor and that's a very distinctive russian pattern i think on the scale that happens here and you think this will this will sink for through for another couple of generations it all is certainly for at least one russian seem to like living that way you know you will which is strange because because the russians are. no rich not rich or that the that the brits americans but they have two houses that's not science and so they have six television sets instead of three he did not acknowledge that everybody gets out everything that they are for refrigerators the good to good to here and they keep these people commuting with their kids and you know right and of course this is not necessarily good for the environment and it causes all sorts of traffic problems but it clearly it's a pattern that's the has emerged it is i think it's pretty deeply rooted you said people will be going to where the money is but. in the age of internet do people

really have to live in big cities you know people don't have to live in big cities but there's a very interesting phenomenon which we see in the united states and that's certain cities that were shrinking that are growing and are san francisco washington new york these are cities which actually have a kind of cultural life through the returns are people want to be with other people so i don't people can work anywhere but they still want to be with other people says blair the director of kind of the institute for advanced gresham's spotlight will be back shortly after we take a break so stay with us we'll continue this interview in there. i had a family i lived in a fairly nice community wasn't which was an upscale it was just like you know

archie bunker's society ok then they started showing up here what happened was my company decided i could get cheap labor and they got rid of us. legally legally. every morning we have to go to work and you know we have to pay our bills and we have to do it and that's just the american dream and if you want the american dream you have to go by the last i think it is here's one of the trails in the united states. i watch and they run down my property and about this noise. from the wire is protecting the country and the kind of guy who doesn't mind it is pants dirty so i come out here you know we're all immigrants as well that we all do something. this is our time to reclaim their. dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that

out of many we all want that wall we breathe we hope. to me the american dream is to live in peace and prosperity and freedom and government under socialism is not a government of free. i have very motivated out cross that are activists who are willing to fight for what they think is right for themselves but in fact this board for a bridge. i. i. i we are drowning in property drowning and i think it's spread by it's cutting off our. it's making real democracy. all but impossible.

welcome back to spotlight i'm now going up and just to remind you that my guest on the show today is blair rubel director of cannon institute for advanced studies are we talking about the problems of moscow the capital city in russia one of the greatest problems is driving on the traffic jam as we we've already mentioned that well the only alternative that anyone would mention for a fall for the japs and from cruising number of one of the beatles is.

transportation but you said russians love the duchesse russians also love their cars. their cars that's absolutely right will we will we be able to to put russians back into the buses well if i said earlier the government can't tell people where to live maybe if maybe the government can tell people how to get to work no i don't think there's any simple answer to this and part because of the way just moscow's built in circles it promotes congestion but i think what's important is you already have a pretty certainly the subway system is one of the best in the world you need to have a public transport alternative you can have people work at home you can change work hours there's a lot of things you can do but i have to say with this number of people living here they're going to be traffic jams i mean one of these is very interesting to me about moscow or these wonderful websites which tell you where the traffic jams are we don't really have anything quite that good and washington and and so there are

all sorts of technological fixes that can help but fundamentally it seems russians do love their cars and they'd rather sit in their cars than move about on the subway or the go so live jim and i was in jeopardy and i did what i did a lot of people to look at a lot of your brands go on it's making cars for the you know hard to take them as long as it is not a way they do take a lot of you know i always wonder no one no one can tell me if you park a limo on a parking meter and it actually occupies two places dead do you put your quit into what you need to run into to i've never had no one gives a can give me no it's not my problem the biggest downside of that was from a traffic policeman in london he said well ok your food drives the limit he hasn't . got the plaque ok well let's move on everyone in the world whether the problems of big cities is the growing number of the alarming number of the city pool which causes. is it inevitable cities cities are hostile and to people cities

like they they they they then they develop well and well let's turn this around cities are places of opportunity and the reason why people come to cities is they may be poor but maybe some door will open and they will be poor anymore so i think when we put ourselves in the position of migrants it becomes it becomes obvious that cities create opportunities and that's where they come here but the problem of poverty in the twenty first century is real and it's profound there are something like two billion people who live on two dollars a day or or less and every major city in the world is facing this problem and until and unless we recognize that poverty is a problem is going to continue and it's it's a it's a very serious problem everywhere it's a serious problem for moscow and and i i would anticipate that it's reached the

point that people in government and in the private sector will begin to think of provoking sense of provoking more and more tensions that i'm so sure the nationalists and they know this i think there are countries where most of the population the well to do i mean rural population is mostly ok but still when you if you go to a big city you will find the poor the i mean the people that i live below the below the no no and what happens is poverty becomes concentrated and it becomes concentrated in certain neighborhoods and that creates all sorts of problems and there's no simple there's no simple answer but i wasn't the reason for the riots that we saw in london some. do you think this was the main reason i think it was part of the reason but i think when that when something like that happens there's a complex set of reasons and it clearly it wasn't just poverty it wasn't just jobs it was it was distrust of authorities and there's a whole come america's cities of had the same problem challenge i would say not

a problem it's a reality that if the poor fuel is there for not being respected the lash out and and it takes again there's no one solution but you have to have you have to have. a different kind of policing you have to have jobs but also there are only you know there has to be a change in attitude everywhere must go is not divided between ethnic ethnically homogeneous the district so does that mean then that that then them. well be. acts of violence like we said linda why i think there have been small acts of violence that take place here but if we go back we're talking about the soviet legacy i think one of the biggest soviet legacies for cities is that they were not segregated by class because a lot of the housing was controlled by enterprises and i think we see

a class segregation taking place in moscow now but moscow still has the advantage that you do not have whole large scale homogeneous ethnic neighborhoods and i i would think that there are that is an issue that policymakers really need to concentrate on to be sure that all people are integrated into moscow society because because that's the only way you're going to avoid some of these problems well the polls that in russia today they show that the mood into ethnic tension still is rising yes and and most the majority of the natives blame the bad behavior of the newcomers of the migrants do you agree on the rates no i think it's really this is this is a kind of standard response i think you know you come to my city you may have thought oh wait i do yeah but of course what happens is over time it becomes someone else's city as well and one of the problems with immigration and why it's

so we see so much tension is people have an image of their city in their head usually from when they first move their own children charlie and then one day they walk out and suddenly who are all these people on the street and they don't act the way i lost for example right at once and this is a two way street there has to be people here have to begin to understand not just here in and european cities and i say this is just this is life in the twenty first century but you know in russia one of the sayings say you never bring. your charts two two two two four and convents yeah so but i think you can keep you can make people behave themselves if you live in a small village you say this is this is the way things are done in the village but but in a city like the last century i mean no i mean people right people are going to actual real where they want to act and that holds for russians too and so what has

to happen is i think there has to be a constant process and the gauche asian and people aren't always going to like one another i mean when you talk about my book on moscow it was on moscow chicago and all soccer my central thesis was if people have to be democrats to have democracy you'll never have to mock recy people aren't going to love one another but they can act as if they can tolerate one another and that's that's what has to try to be reinforced but still the moscow government they they tried to impose some restrictive tradition for example there's been there's been lots of controversy around these these ritual things as islamic racial things like like sacrificing sheep and so on cutting throats and sharing blood in the streets that they want to for abed that do you think that such restrictive measures are adequate and they may work. well i think the moscow government has the right to do that really but how are you going to enforce it and there's always a problem with with behavioral issues that if you outlaw it it doesn't go away it

goes underground and i think. that's where there has to be a balance between you know obviously actually that they're against doing that publicly i mean i mean you wouldn't expect a sacrifice the sheep in your street right know that i mean that's right no that's right but i got only there are animal sacrifices taking place in new york every day and and but i there's one point i want to make if you look at moscow ethnic tensions are rising but there are other cities in russia that have been somewhat more successful like you catherine. and there is now the beginning of some tension you have to work with a lot of immigrants of central asia and from the very beginning the local authorities have tried to create opportunities for contacts and for creating space and the situations not quite yours is now as contentious as it is in moscow i spent lots of years in london and london has always been that london i was proud of being

an example of like a multi-ethnic multicultural stuff but it seems to it seems to be cracking and then it seemed well but i think i actually think london is is the example of the danger for the twenty first century you can imagine the city that was more tolerant and did more to reach out to minorities with all sorts of problems around the edges better than rights and yet even in london there were problems how we can also say what should we do what would what's the what's the. lesson that we have to look i think the lesson is the fire is never out you have to keep working at it there's no alternative but to work and to try to create structures so that different communities and individuals can negotiate with one another and if. if you start out by saying you're going to live like we live at the end of the day that's not going to work because people who really don't want to live like you live want so what you

have to begin to do is to say ok it's acceptable for you to do x. inside but not outside or this is where religious tolerance started in amsterdam it was all right for different faiths to pray inside but not outside that's the beginning of religious tolerance in the world and that's the kind of negotiation that has to take place where has to be views in the negotiation not just one side telling the other side what to do well interesting thing when they ask me what's different in moscow well twenty years ago and now i see moscow used to be a nice city now it's a fun city but it's not nice anymore do you agree. russia is not russia moscow is not a nice this but it is a fun thank you thank you very much very much for me with a just to remind that that my guest on the show today was left the director kevin institute for advanced russian studies and that's it for now from all of us here if you want to have your sound spotlight or have someone in mind so you think i spent

the next time to drop me a line that probably don't add to deduct for you and let's keep the share interactive spotlight will be back with more comments on what's going on in an abstract russia until then they are to take it thank you ed.

it's not about spilling blood. just a war of the barricades from one side and fears blockade from the other. invisible border has cut people from the land for twelve year. the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over.

the ripples of tensions on the partisan gulf and now being felt worldwide as all that france's have jumped in response to the standoff between tehran and the few hours of a naval exercises this comes as a u. member states announced plans to ban imports of iranian crude oil later this month . treme wins the iowa caucuses could fail the republican contest to pick the strongest candidate to cops allies of dissolution and was barack obama in the race for the white house to be decided in no doubt about. the euro's woes flare up again after christmas along with a from the smell threatening to ditch the euro zone and lies the final no bailout passed into its collapsing economy. as the headlines up next find out what kind of alternative biking group the occupy wall street movement proposes and how the idea

is being received it's all in the i'm going to show. welcome to the lower show where you get the real headlines with none of the mercy or can live in washington d.c. now and i'm going to speak to the founder of the alternative banking group fifty hp saying the occupy movement isn't offering any real solutions while this group of bankers and traders and lawyers they want to help but how are they being received then glenn greenwald joins us to discuss the notion that america supports democracy in the arab world we've heard a million times.