Blair Ruble Gave a Lecture on City Governance at the HSE
‘In comparison with other cities her size, Moscow is not in such a bad condition. The infrastructure may be worn, it may not be the most logical, it can certainly be improved. If you compare London and New York and Tokyo with Moscow, maybe you find Moscow coming up short. But if you lived in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, Moscow would look like a goal to try to achieve.
While Moscow has its problems which have to be solved, the situation isn’t hopeless. One of the motifs in the conversations in the Russian kitchen is always to radiate past: the past is always wonderful, the present is always bad and the future will be worse. Fair enough, but it is also important to remember that you have possibilities to do things here which don’t take place in other places.’