Dal "The St. Petersburg Times"
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=33625
Russia’s “second capital” has made the grade. For the first time in many years, St. Petersburg finds itself ahead of Moscow, and in a rating that is not for “criminal capital” or “most polluted city” status (the fields in which the city, fairly or not, has reigned for a number of years).
In its freshly released quality-of-life index, the influential U.K. research agency, Economist Intelligence Unit, chose St. Petersburg as the city with the best quality of life anywhere in Russia.
While the city’s real position in the ratings was 68 out of 140 of the world’s largest cities, far below nearby Helsinki (no. 6), or Vienna (no. 3), Paris (no. 16), Toronto (no. 4) or Osaka (no. 12), it was still two places above the Russian capital.
The experts who compiled the ratings evaluated residents’ economic, social and personal well-being based on 30 major criteria. These include GDP per capita, security, employment, health care standards, transport infrastructure, the level of environmental pollution and divorce rates.
Canada’s Vancouver holds the first position in the rating, while Zimbabwe’s Harare is at the bottom of the list.
City Hall welcomed the rating’s results. Yevgeny Yelin, head of Smolny’s Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, could not help complimenting himself and his counterparts on what he clearly believes is a good job.
“St. Petersburg is a comfortable and attractive place in which to live, do business, study and relax. Its prime position is no coincidence, it is well-deserved,” Yelin told reporters this week.
Not everyone in town is so sure. The rating sparked a fierce debate that has already cost a plum job for a talk show host, who likened St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko to Adolf Hitler in his on-air comments on Monday on Vesti FM.
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Locals have complained about the city’s poor record on snow and ice clearance.
Apparently astonished by the rating’s results, the host, Dmitry Gubin, gleefully poured malice over the subject, branding St. Petersburg “the hole of a rural loo instead of the window to Europe,” and accusing Matviyenko of “continuing Hitler’s business because she is destroying the city.”
Within a few hours of the end of the show, the host was informed that he had been fired for what his bosses have described as an “impermissable on-air style.” (See article on page 5.)
What does sound amazing to the report’s critics is that St. Petersburg is not ranked so very far from London, which was ranked 57th, or New York, placed at 56th position.
The local blogosphere has exploded with scathing commentary, in which deaths from falling ice, hazing in the army and the corridors of dilapidated hospitals featured prominently.
“How on earth can you objectively assess the level of healthcare in St. Petersburg, where conditions vary drastically in both the private sector and state hospitals alike?” wrote one blogger. “I do not need to look at the ratings. As someone who has been to a state clinic, I can testify that it is pure hell, with hardly any medication available, and the manner of many of the staff borders on sadism.”
“One thought that comes to mind almost immediately is what hell life has become in other cities if ours is considered best,” said Maria Matskevich, a leading researcher with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Another thing is the sources that the experts have used. For example, to assess the level of water pollution, anyone would automatically contact Vodokanal, our sewage and water treatment monopolist. If you listen to them and go with them to test the water when it comes out from the water treatment plant, you get a rosy picture. However, if you go with Greenpeace to test the local rivers for pollution, or ring the bell of a randomly chosen apartment in town to test the water in their sink, the results would be devastatingly different.”
On a more philosophical note, Matskevich was sad to note the high emotional degree of the debate surrounding the ratings, complete with the firing of a commentator.
“After all, this is just one of many ratings. You can learn from it or you can ignore it, but indulging in fervored discussion — which is essentially about “are we better than our bigger brother” after all — just betrays the deep dissatisfaction of local residents both with the provincial status of their city and the living standards, too,” Matskevich said.
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