industrial skills and little industrial experience. To solve these issues, several hundred foreign specialists arrived to direct the work, including a team of architects headed by the German Ernst May. According to the original plans, the city was to have followed the linear city design, with rows of similar superblock neighborhoods running parallel to the factory, with a strip of greenery, or greenbelt, separating them. Planners would align living and production spheres so as to minimize necessary travel time: workers would generally live in a sector of the residential band closest to the sector of the industrial band in which they worked. However, by the time that May completed his plans for Magnitogorsk, construction of both factory and housing had already started. The sprawling factory and enormous cleansing lakes had left little room available for development, and May therefore had to redesign his settlement to fit the modified site. This modification resulted in a city being more "rope-like" than linear. Although the industrial area is concentrated on the left bank of the river Ural, and most residential complexes are on its right bank, the city inhabitants are still subjected to noxious fumes and factory smoke. The book Behind the Urals, by John Scott, documents the industrial development of Magnitogorsk during the 1930s. Scott discusses the fast-paced industrial and social developments during Stalin's first five-year plan and the rising paranoia of the Soviet regime preceding the Great Purge of the late 1930s. Closed city In 1937 foreigners were told to leave, and Magnitogorsk was declared a closed city. There is little reliable information about events and development of the city during the closed period. The city played an important role during World War II because it supplied much of the steel for the Soviet war effort. Furthermore, its strategic location east of the Ural Mountains made Magnitogorsk safe from seizure by the German Army. Re-opening During perestroika, the closed-city status was removed, and foreigners were allowed to visit the city again. The years after perestroika brought a significant change in the life of the city; the Iron and Steel Plant was reorganized as a joint-stock company Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MISW or MMK), which helped with the reconstruction of the railway and the building of a new airport. With the depletion of the substantial local iron-ore reserves, Magnitogorsk has to import raw materials from Sokolvsko-Sarbaisky deposit in northern Kazakhstan. Magnitogorsk