Where to Live and Study in Russia: Best Cities Index

Experts ranked 90 Russian cities by living conditions.

Strelka Design Bureau specialists composed Urban Environment Quality Index. A range of factors were considered, such as quality of city housing and its premises, street greening, availability of recreation areas and leisure activities etc. Each factor had sub-items, for example, infrastructure diversity, city safety level etc that were given points, too, which then added up to overall city score. To obtain data, the experts used satellite imagery and navigation and social media information.

Moscow was awarded top ranking among large cities. It was followed by St Petersburg and Kazan which scored more points than Moscow for public leisure facilities, a major attraction for students.

The first ten most comfortable cities to live in having a population of over one million included Nizhny Novgorod and Voronezh in central Russia, Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk in Ural Region and Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk in Siberia.