13 July, 2022
Analysts at Marketing Logic have assessed the development level of banking infrastructure in Russia's largest cities based on publicly available information and their own data showcase. Marketing Logic, an analytics company, has ranked Russia's greenest cities based on open data and geo-information technology. The resort city of Sochi leads the ranking with almost 90% of the city's area covered by forests and parks, while Astrakhan comes in at the bottom with 5% of the city's total area covered by green spaces.
Marketing Logic, an analytics company specializing in geo-information technology and data analysis, has produced a study of Russia's cities with a population of 50,000 or more. The research focused on the proportion of green spaces, including parks and public gardens, national parks, forests, and gardens located within the cities. The surface area included in the research was calculated according to the official administrative city limits. All calculations were performed through the Atlas geographic information system: the platform identified all green areas within city boundaries into separate polygons, after which analysts calculated their share of the total area and subsequently ranked the cities by the share of parks from the maximum to the minimum.
Top 20 Russian cities by maximum share of forests and parks: Sochi (89%), Novorossiysk (71%), Sergiyev Posad (63%), Noginsk (61%), Serpukhov (59%), Vladivostok (59%), Orekhovo-Zuyevo (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%).
Top 20 Russian cities by minimum share of forests and parks: 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 Saint Petersburg (24%).
It is noteworthy that the Top 20 of the country's greenest cities includes five cities in the Moscow Region: Sergiyev Posad, Noginsk, Serpukhov, Orekhovo-Zuyevo, and Podolsk.
The cities with a population of over one million people have also been placed in separate Top 5 rankings for the maximum and minimum share of forests and parks within the city limits. The Top 5 "major green cities" are Perm (56%), Krasnodar (46%), Ufa (39%), Voronezh (38%), and Novosibirsk (35%). The Top 5 of the country's major cities with the least parks are: Omsk (20%), Samara (21%), Saint Petersburg (24%), Krasnoyarsk (25%), and Chelyabinsk (26%).
Moscow, with 29% of its land area taken up by parks and forest parks, did not make either the top ranking or the list of the least green megalopolises.
"We see from the example of the capital and other cities of Russia and the world the kind of consideration now being given to urban infrastructure improvement and raising the residents' level of comfort. The proximity of parks and forest parks is one of the key indicators of the ecological well-being of the city; residents, property buyers, and real estate developers have their eyes on this. The pandemic has shown how important, in addition to proximity to the city centre and the availability of all necessary infrastructure in residential areas, are accessible places for walks, fresh air, and an opportunity to get away from the ‘home office’. We hope that our research highlights the opportunities that Russian cities have and suggests to some of them what more could be done in this direction. Perhaps it will not be new parks, but landscape gardening of streets and courtyards, which will already make the lives of city dwellers more pleasant and comfortable.", - Dmitry Galkin, Managing Partner, Marketing Logic.