Massive Moscow urban renovation plans prompt protests

In the United States, urban renewal often is the term applied to massive government efforts in the 1960s to create modern living conditions in inner cities by extensive demolition of existing housing in favor of constructing large government-planned housing complexes. Many people consider these efforts to have been a failure—for disrupting existing communities (largely poorer and working-class African Americans), the droll architectural styles employed, and, importantly, plans to extend interstate highways through neighborhoods that favored transportation of suburban residents over inner cities populations. Many of these efforts led to increased community organization and protests. Now in Moscow a similar plan is underway to replace Soviet-era housing with new, modern housing for the city’s middle class, with similar results—increased community organization and protests, which are extremely rare activities in Russia.

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Plan to relocate 1.6 million Muscovites turns middle class Russians into protesters

By David Filipov

The Washington Post

June 10, 2017