Our analytics provide an unprecedented insight into the unique culture and trends of each individual city, and this understanding will enable architects, urban planners, and developers to successfully evolve and improve individual monotowns based on the changing needs and wants of their citizens.
Monotowns span a wide range of topographical, natural, and historical conditions, and represent a wide range of twentieth century planning styles. Therefore, improving the quality of life in these cities requires an individualized, careful analysis of each site’s networks, perceptions, and activities.
While SPIN Unit has previously studied and consulted on measuring the quality of life of urban spaces in other European cities (including London, Moscow, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Moscow), the study of monotowns provided a unique challenge, as no initial economic or demographic information was available and they are evenly distributed over all the Russian territory, making it impossible to carry out surveys. Using our data, we measured and compared the quality of life of each city based on the number of activities occurring in a city, and the distribution of these activities. A city with a high number of activities, evenly distributed across its urban space, was considered to be more vibrant and varied
More on the monotowns project’s website available in Russian.
Full report on methodology, data analytics, and results is under exclusive Strelka licence until 2018, and cannot be currently released by SPIN.
The hidden life of 32 monotowns
Measuring the quality of life of Russian industrial cities