Urban environment quality and its impact on socio-economic development

An important indicator of life quality, the urban environment, largely determines the comfort of life for the population and business. The state of post-socialist European cities testifies to the problems of the urban environment which have economic and social nature. The authors identify two groups of factors that determine urban environment quality and analyze advantages and disadvantages inherent in various methods of assessing it. The object of the analysis was a group of large Russian cities - regional capitals with the population from 250 thousand to 1 million people (except cities with extreme climate). Various indicators of the urban environment quality (2018-2019) and a number of indicators of socio-economic development (2013-2015, 2018) were taken into account. The research is aimed at identifying the relationship between the parameters of socio-economic development of the city and the region with the urban environment quality. The dependence between the urban environment quality and the level of the city budget income per capita has been determined, which allowed us to divide the analyzed cities into groups. Based on the results of our study, the recommendations have been formulated to address current urban issues and improve the living standards of citizens. The authors propose to use in post-socialist European countries an integrated urban quality assessment methodology that includes both objective methods based on statistical data and subjective methods derived from expert evaluations and population surveys and involving citizens in the urban debate.