The analytical company Marketing Logic has rated the “greenest” cities in Russia based on open data and geoinformation technologies. The resort city of Sochi topped the ranking with almost 90% of its area covered with urban forests and parks, and Astrakhan ranks lowest with 5% of the green areas in the city.
Marketing Logic, specializing in geoinformation technologies and data analysis, has made a study of Russian cities with a population of 50,000 people or more. The share of green areas was determined - including parks and squares, national parks, urban forests, gardens - that was within the official administrative boundaries of the cities. The calculations were carried out in the Atlas geoinformation system; the platform determined all the green zones within the boundaries of cities as separate sites, and the analysts calculated their share of the total area of the cities. Subsequently, the cities were ranked by the share of parks, from maximum to minimum.
Sochi (89%), Novorossiysk (71%), Sergiev Posad (63%), Noginsk (61%), Serpukhov (59%), Vladivostok (59%), Orekhovo-Zuevo (57%), Vladimir (57%), Zelenodolsk (56%), Perm (56%), Saransk (50%), Stary Oskol (50%), Yekaterinburg (48%), Kaluga (48%), Krasnodar (46%), Penza (45%), Lipetsk (45%), Barnaul (44%), Murmansk (44%), and Podolsk (42%) rank among the TOP-20 Russian cities by the maximum share of urban forests and parks within the city.
Astrakhan (5%), Chernogorsk (7%), Naberezhnye Chelny (9%), Novomoskovsk (12%), Khabarovsk (16%), Yaroslavl (16%), Cherepovets (17%), Sterlitamak (17%), Kemerovo (17%), Ivanovo (18%), Vologda (18%), Kostroma (19%), Belgorod (20%), Omsk (20%), Norilsk (20%) %), Samara (21%), Volzhsky (22%), Bryansk (22%), and St. Petersburg (24%) rank among the TOP-20 Russian cities by the minimum share of urban forests and parks within the city.
It is noteworthy that the TOP-20 of the greenest cities in the country included 5 cities of the Moscow Region like Sergiev Posad, Noginsk, Serpukhov, Orekhovo-Zuyevo, and Podolsk.
Among the cities with a million-plus population, TOP-5 Russian cities were determined by the maximum and minimum share of urban forests and parks within the city. Perm (56%), Krasnodar (46%), Ufa (39%), Voronezh (38%), and Novosibirsk (35%) are among the TOP-5 green million-plus cities.
Omsk (20%), Samara (21%), St. Petersburg (24%), Krasnoyarsk (25%), and Chelyabinsk (26%) are among the TOP-5 largest cities in the country with very few parks and urban forests.
Moscow, with 29% of its area covered with parks and urban forests, was not included in the list of the leaders or the list of the “least green” megacities.
“As in the case of the capital of our country and other cities of Russia and the world, we see what attention is now being paid to landscaping and increasing the comfort of the people living in the cities. The parks and urban forests located rather close to where the people live are the key indicators of the ecological well-being of the city; residents, property buyers, and developers take this aspect into account. The Covid-19 pandemic showed that the places for a walk (located close to their house), fresh air, and the opportunity to escape from their “home office” became very important, in addition to proximity to the city centre and the availability of all the necessary infrastructure in the city’s residential areas. We hope that our research will highlight the opportunities that the Russian cities have, and help some cities understand that much more can be done. Perhaps, this will not be large parks, but landscaping the streets, foreyards and backyards can make the life of citizens more pleasant and comfortable,” says Dmitry Galkin, managing partner at Marketing Logic.
