hello again to welcome to spotlight the interview show on r.t. . today my guest in the studio is group. 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 careful planning for the sake of striking 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 comfortable for everybody here's the man who knows the director of. the best russian study. sociologists and 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

western high wages and better life for 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. 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 city the size is so complex it's hard hard to say in some ways you mentioned over. 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 so that's that's a huge qualitative difference what in terms of the moscow of the soviet union it's 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 were 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 an 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 have it 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. moskos population has been growing steadily over the last eight hundred fifty years and it still is really do you think it will be growing and growing and growing while limited while there is a limit to to the cities to cities population modern times or 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 where. twice as large as moscow thank you martin well 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 to think that there are undoubtedly

there is some kind of limit but it's knowable exactly where it is in 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 and maybe this is exactly the percent of russia's money isn't most that's right so it's not like our keep growing and told there's money elsewhere well let's hear more about it right now from spotlights he learned that the me that. the us is so strictly regulated than its citizens was far from easy for non muscovites to come and live in the capital the collapse of the soviet union open 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 off school 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 where. nine million people buy the nest to made it fifteen me

then car included in this cd it's been asked demanded that muscovites need seven million more rooms in order for their living conditions to become comfortable no less than three thousand new cars in most schools 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 what is needed twenty years ago the city planners could not in dissipate such explosive urban groome 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 well 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 well i think if the economy grows margaret will come here 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 look color and don't you know how our jobs and demographically the russian population is 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 a challenge everywhere after thirty million we think this was so i don't know i don't know probably not probably not that much but but you're already as you say fifteen sixteen million people. well russian population in general in the country as you said which is pretty centralized is mostly. concentrated in

a few urban centers yes. 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 will friendly rule there is 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 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 visible middle class in many russian cities and not just moscow st peters for you katherine bergen and so on and so forth so i think if if there were real jobs that

existed 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 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 another couple of generations it all has certainly for at least one russian seem to like living that way you know you know which is strange because because the russians are. no rich not rich show that that brits americans but they have two houses it's not a science center so they have six television sets instead of three he acknowledges that only by your bedside everything that they are for refrigerators the good to.

and there they keep comedic 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 there are 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 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 the spotlight will be back shortly after we take a break so stay with us we'll tell you can do this interview in the.

white stream cascading from on the slopes to you is miss moments. but this beauty brings deaths at a speed of more than two hundred kilometers. the steps of a launch. this is our time. to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we are one that one we breathe the 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 people 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 and. i. think. we are drowning in property drowning and i think it's threatened by it's cutting off our. it's making real democracy. all but impossible. it's not about spilling blood. it's the war of the barricades from one side and fears blockade from the other.

invisible border has cut people from the land for twelve years. the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over. welcome back to the spotlight i'm now going of 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 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 jams and from crazy number of automobiles is public transportation but you said russians

love the duchess 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 a few people were 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 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 systems 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 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 go so live jim and i was in jeopardy and i did a lot of people to look at a lot of your brand go i was making cars for the you know heart attack i was on a serious note 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 to give the can give me no it's not my problem the best 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 that black 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 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 is 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 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 socialism 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 we 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 this summer 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 there has to be a change in attitude everywhere must go is not divided between ethnic ethnically homogeneous the district so does that mean that that that that then. won't be. acts of violence like we said linda why 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 bigger 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 home 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 new covers of the migrants do you agree are 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 you know i don't know yet but 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 around 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 a two way street there has to be people here have to begin to understand not just here in and european cities and i sense 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 yeah. 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 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 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 and 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 what 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 throat 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 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 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 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 catch remember 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 a monster i spent lots of years in london and london has always be that london was

proud of being an example of like a multi-ethnic multicultural stuff but it seems to it seems to be cracking at the seams well 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 edge better than rights and yet even in london there were problems and we can also see what she we do what we 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 a different face 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 there 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 dealing. with russia is not russia moscow is not a nice it's fun it is a fun thank you thank you very much this is 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 up to deduct are you in 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 taking thank you betty.

the e.u. says it has agreed in principle to an embargo on iranian oil exports driving up fears of a spike in oil prices a global economy. the syrian national council the country's largest opposition group is urging the u.n. security council to approve a no fly zone in the most vulnerable parts of the country leaders of several anti-government movements also want. some sort of a mission in syria and except it has failed to halt almost ten months of bloodshed in which thousands of. obama announces a new strategy for the u.s. military. its global superiority plan calls on the armed

forces to reach a focus to asia and the pacific and abandon the capability to fight two simultaneous wars. prosecutors demanded death by hanging for eighty three year old former president hosni mubarak from power by public protest early last year is already being seen as an attempt to divert public attention from criticism of the country's military rulers. and those were the headlines up next artie's debate show cross talk with peter love. if you can. follow in welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle boris yeltsin was he a great man who made history or was he merely a product of his time and opinions differ widely don't know when denies the.