Penza, 21 May 2013. PenzaNews. Penza took the 40th place in the general rating of attractiveness of Russian cities, compiled on the basis of study of quality of living conditions in the regions of Russia made by the Ministry of Regional Development, the Russian Union of Engineers, State Construction Committee, Service for Customer Supervision, and Moscow State University named after M. Lomonosov.

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“The study was conducted in 2012–2013 in 164 cities of Russia. The rating is based on 13 indices reflecting main directions in evaluation of quality of urban living environment. These are the dynamics of the population, its demographic characteristics, social parameters of society, well-being of citizens, social infrastructure, city economy, housing development, housing affordability, innovation activity, transport and engineering infrastructure, human resources, natural and ecological situation,” the press service of the Ministry of Regional Development told news agency “PenzaNews.”

The department explained that the leading positions of the rating were taken by the cities having high indices in most of the listed parameters except housing affordability.

“These are the cities with populations of 1 million people and more — Moscow, St Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don and others. The cities-development leaders which also entered the top lines are Vladivostok, Krasnodar, Sochi, Kaliningrad, investment-attractive cities — Tomsk, Omsk, Surgut, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Yaroslavl, Saratov, and the cities with high construction pace — Podolsk, Khimki, Balashikha, Mytishy,” the Ministry of Regional Development of Russia explained.

“The centers of innovation development include Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh and Yekaterinburg. Kazan is a city with the most favorable investment policy. Tomsk is marked as a research and innovation center with development of diversified energy and petrochemical sectors,” the ministry pointed out.