tv [untitled] January 5, 2012 8:31am-9:01am EST
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angries threatens to abandon your obscene goal currency unless he is guaranteed a new multi billion euro bailout the announcements part of a massive euro selloff on global markets with nervous investors sending the euro record low. spotlight is next here on our to his guest explore how to make a modern city of millions comfortable for everyone. hello again to walk into the spotlight the interview show on arts in. today my guest in the studio is the rule. of big cities around the globe experience common problems like traffic jams pollution and migration many russian cities have changed dramatically during the last two decades and sometimes it seems they sacrifice
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careful planning for the sake of strife in the lab so wouldn't it be wiser to take a look at some other big 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. advanced russia study player. sociologists and one of russia's worst problems is the concentration of people in a metropolitan areas people from all over the country pouring in and western high wages and better life the big cities suffer as the gap between the rich and the pool grows and tensions spark between the immigrants and locals it gets worse when ethnic communities clash giving rise to nationalism and affecting public safety. thank you thank you very much for being with us well you wrote a book on the silver age moscow and so i think it should be easier for you than for
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many other people maybe even easier for us muscovites to register the change that moscow has experienced well during the last twenty fifteen years what's your opinion on the way moscow is changing is it changing for the better for the worse other more mistakes or much more progress made well you know i actually think it's a. complicated city this size is so complex it's hard hard to say in some ways you mentioned silver age 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 that existed before but of course the scale is different is ten times bigger so all the problems become to become times bigger than it would have been one 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
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better has 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 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
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you have to yeah you have to drive aggressively add to it if you didn'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 new york and tokyo and and maybe some other cities like south paulo and rio the the cities are the same size it's not so unusual. moscow's population has been growing steadily over the last fifty years and it still is going to be do you think it will be growing and growing and growing well limited while there is a limit to to a city's to city's population in modern times or you know some specialist like to
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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 where. twice as large as moscow thanks emerton well put some powers 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 most this population has doubled in my lifetime it used to be eight when i was a kid right at sixteen right now and so so i think that there are undoubtedly there is some kind of limit but it's noble exactly where it is and moscow's problem 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 that maybe there's not exactly three percent of russia's money isn't most that's right so it's not like our keep growing until there's money elsewhere well let's hear more about it right now from spotlights helium that. the u.s. is so strictly regulated good movement of its citizens it was far from easy for non
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muscovites to come and live in the capital the collapse of the soviet union moscow to new homes 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 hated capital. cities in for. structure housing and traffic when and when not ready for the change must go on the house homes for about nine million people by the nest to made it fifteen me then current food in this city it's been asked demanded that muscovites needs seven million more in order for their living conditions to become comfortable no less than three thousand new cars during moscow's traffic every year rochelle one can see thirty to food to cool me to jams as a result and parking is sometimes even more of a headache then moving around the city is the number of parking spaces this hoffer
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what is needed twenty years ago the city planners could not in dissipate such explosive urban growth even with new roads and houses being built in most schools the gap between demand and supply is still considerable. when we say growing today. as far as i understand it my feeling is that is that moscow speculation is growing because of migrants especially from the from the poor country that central asia. would continue to go. to be the tendency or i think if the economy grows margaret. 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 so it's there must be keeps growing you need labor and at the same time the russian population they don't want to cheap labor they don't want blue collar and don't you know hala jobs and demographically the russian population is
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shrinking so i think in the foreseeable future five to ten years you will be more i think there were yes there will be more immigrants coming to moscow and that and that's the challenge everywhere after the thirty million who think there's no i don't i don't know probably not probably not that much but but you're already as you say 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 in these or 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 will friendly rural areas will will start naturally or are we need like a government decision for that well i think governments are very bad telling people
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where to live and also money it doesn't work so i don't i started studying 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 a visible middle class in many russian cities and not just moscow st peters for you catherine 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 expert people would move to the suburbs where it became possible that hasn't happened instead people by their doctors which is 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 it happens here and
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you think this will this will stick for another couple of generations it all has certainly for at least what russians seem to like living that way you know you know which is strange because because the russians are. no rich not richer than the brits americans but they have two houses outside of science and so they have six televisions. cents instead of three he nods i don't like about five everything therefore refrigerators that the two and they keep the keep of 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
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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 for them it turns out people want to be with other people so i don't i people can work anywhere but they still want to be with other people says blair will be director of canon 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 the. wealthy british style sign. is not on. the. market why not
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come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on. the close up team has been to docu stuff birthplace to the most ambitious football club in the world. if. not all of our g goes to the far east where the timber industry attracts the legendary siberian tigers where the ancient native community loses its way in the modern world. and where the country's mineral wealth starts its way across the ocean. and well come to the come bars creature russia close up. this is our time. to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth
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that out of many we are one that won't we breathe we hope. to me the american dream is to live in peace and prosperity and freedom and a government under socialism is not a government of free. you . have very motivated out cross the country who are activists who are willing to fight for what they think is right for themselves but the fact is forty four bridge. we are drowning in property drowning and i think it's spread out why it's cutting off our. it's making the marker see. all but impossible.
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welcome back to spotlight i am now going of in just a reminder that my guest on the show today is blair rubel director of canon institute for advanced studies are we talking about the problems of moscow the capital city of russia one of the greatest problems is driving out the traffic jams we will get he mentioned that well the only alternative that anyone would mention for for for for the jabs and from crazy number of automobiles is public 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
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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 your 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 are 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 it 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 cold so learn german cars and gently as i do that a lot of people who know a lot of people abroad go is making cars for the you know heart attack i want to
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see but it's not a. they do take a lot of you know i always wondered though and 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 you fool drive the limit he hasn't. let you know the park ok well let's move on everywhere in the world one of the problems of big cities is the growing number of the alarming number of the city pool which causes all social is it inevitable cities cities are hostile to people cities like they they they they then they develop well 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
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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 sits a provoking more and more tensions that are subtler than absolutely and you 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
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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 this 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 comp american cities that had the same problem challenge i would say not a problem it's a reality that if the poor feel 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
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there has to be a change in attitude everywhere mosco is not divided between ethnic ethnically homogeneous the district so does that mean that that that then them won't be. acts of violence like we said london why think there have been small acts of violence that take place here but if we go back we're talking about the soviet way you can see 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 large scale homogeneous ethnic neighborhoods and i i would think that there are that is an issue that policymakers really need to concentrate
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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 ethnic tension still is rising and and most the majority of the natives blame the bad behavior of the newcomers of the migrants do you agree are the rights. 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've been here i thought oh you know i don't know 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 moved there or through from childhood 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 would ask for example right at once and this is
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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 child. to to to a foreign convent. but i think you can keep you can make people behave themselves if you live in a small village and say this is this is the way things are done in the village but but in a city like last saturday i mean no i mean people right people are going to act the way they want to act and that holds for russians too and and so what has to happen is i think there has to be a constant process of negotiation 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 osaka my central thesis was. if people have to be democrats to have democracy or never have to mock recy people aren't going to love one another but they can act as
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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 are ritual things as islamic ritual things like like sacrificing sheep and so on cutting throat and ensuring blood in the streets that they want to for a bed 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 over 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 now that area i mean that's right no
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that's right but i doubt really there are animal sacrifices taking place in new york every day and but i know 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 there a lot of immigrants from 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 linda has always been that london was proud of being an example of like a multi-ethnic multicultural stuff but it seems to it seems to be cracking that there 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
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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 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 of use in the negotiation not just one side
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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. russia is not russia moscow is not a nice city let's put it is a fine thank you thank you very much very much for me with a just to remind that my guest on the show today was a black group called 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 not a bad idea are you and let's keep the share interactive spotlight will be back with more of comments on what's going on in an abstract russia until then they are hard to take it thank you ed.
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