Cities by population size. The largest cities in Russia by population

Scattered all over the place big country. Cities with a population of over a million are the center of attraction for millions of tourists from all over the world, migrants, students and workers. Population statistics are compiled from the annual population census by RosStat. It is worth noting that the population includes only citizens who permanently reside in the territory of a particular city. The following are the most populated cities in Russia.

1. Moscow

Moscow is the largest city in Russia both in terms of population and area. A population of 12,330,126 people inhabits both sides of the city’s waterway, the Moscow River. The capital of the state, Moscow, is the most multinational city in Russia: migrants, students, workers and tourists come here from all over the country.

Ten facts about Moscow:

large international center economics and trade;
a major industrial hub of the country;
one of the best and largest educational centers for Russian and foreign students;
a large number of research institutes are located in Moscow;
more than 50 directions in religion;
a large cultural and historical center of the European part of Russia;
the country's largest transport interchange: 3 river ports (Moscow to Soviet times called the “port of 5 seas”), 9 railway stations, 5 airports with directions to all corners of the planet;
Moscow is the “zero kilometer”, all roads lead here;
tourist center of the country;
the capital is one of the top five cities in the world in terms of the number of dollar billionaires living there.

Petrograd, also known as Leningrad or St. Petersburg in short, is located along the sovereign course of the Neva River and its coastal granite. Many poems have been written about the beautiful city, located between Ladoga and the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, near the Baltic Sea. This big city shrouded in secrets and legends. Walking along its streets, you walk along the streets of Dostoevsky, Gogol or Tsvetaeva. Populationis 5,225,690 people with a population density of 3,631 people. per square kilometer at total area city 1439 km².

Ten facts about St. Petersburg:

northern Venice is the second name of the northern capital due to the huge number of large and small rivers, tributaries and canals and the similarity with Venetian streets;
St. Petersburg is listed in the Red Book for the total length of tram tracks within the city - this is 600 kilometers;
the deepest metro in the world, the depth of some stations reaches 80 meters;
“White Nights” is one of the main attractions that attracts tourists to the cultural capital;
in St. Petersburg there is the tallest cathedral in Russia - the Peter and Paul Cathedral, whose spire height is 122.5 meters;
The Hermitage is a world-famous museum that attracts tourists from all over the world, its corridors are 20 kilometers long, and a tourist who wants to get acquainted with all the exhibits of the museum will need several years to complete this mission;
the question that every tourist in the city asks is what is it like? total quantity bridges in St. Petersburg? 447, this is the number in the register of the Mostotrest company, which services the city’s bridges;
Peterhof is an engineering marvel. Fountain Park, which was laid out in the times of Peter the Great, but to this day none of the fountains has a pumping installation, but only a carefully designed pipeline;
Peter “chooses” residents for himself, and not the resident chooses him. Raw and humid climate the city, which at times is very gray and foggy, not every person can endure;
The architecture of St. Petersburg is similar to the architecture of neighboring countries of the European Union - Tallinn on the Estonian side and Helsinki on the Finnish side.

3. Novosibirsk

The city was awarded last place in the top three most populated cities in Russia. It is the center of Siberian industry and trade, research and educational activities, cultural, business and tourism spheres of the district. The Siberian capital is home to 1,584,138 people, while the city area is only 505 km².

Novosibirsk is a city with a very developed infrastructure and economy, and it is a point of attraction for those migrating from nearby cities, regions, republics and even neighboring states.

Five interesting facts about Novosibirsk:

The longest metro bridge is located in the capital of the Siberian Federal District;
the Opera and Ballet Theater in Novosibirsk is a theatrical building that is the first largest in Russia and the second in the world;
Planning Street is both parallel and perpendicular to itself, forming 2 intersections;
the only museum of the Sun in Russia is located in the city;
Novosibirsk Akademgorodok is a large educational and research center in the Siberian Federal District.

4. Ekaterinburg

Ekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk, ranks 4th among Russian cities with a population exceeding one million people (1,444,439 people with a total city area of 1,142 square kilometers). The Trans-Siberian Railway and six major highways pass through this huge transport and sorting center, which occupies a huge niche in Russian logistics. Yekaterinburg is an industrial city with developed industry in a variety of fields, from optical-mechanical to light and food industries.

5. Nizhny Novgorod

Gorky until 1990, or “Nizhny” in common parlance, was a million-plus city and an auto giant in the Volga Federal District. Founded during the time of Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich, Nizhny Novgorod, spread on both sides of the Oka River, today has a population of 1,266,871 people and is the fifth largest city in Russia. The area of the city is only 410 km², but a large seaport, the largest automobile manufacturing plant in Russia, and a concern engaged in the manufacture and production of military equipment, aircraft plant and shipbuilding. In addition to its industrial development, Nizhny Novgorod is famous for its Kremlin and extraordinary architecture. This is a wonderful city for tourism. Even the most experienced traveler will be delighted with the beauty of Nizhny Novgorod.

The city has an area of 425 square kilometers with a population of 1,216,965 people and a population density of 2,863 people per square kilometer. The capital of Tatarstan has its own Kremlin and a fairly rich architectural heritage, which encourages tourism among Russians and foreign residents. Kazan is not just a beautiful and large city, but also a center of international trade and economics, education, tourism with an interesting historical past.

The population of Chelyabinsk is 1,191,994 people per 530 square kilometers, which in terms of density is 2,379 people per square kilometer. “The Tough City,” as it is jokingly called, has a lot funny stories and facts: meteorological hyperion brick, Kaganovichgrad, forest in the city center, Chelyabinsk meteorite, Stalin in Chelyabinsk prison... Are you interested? Then it's time to go to Chelyabinsk on an excursion!

Important and quite large industrial and transport center, where a well-known oil refinery is located both in Russia and abroad. The significant city of Omsk for tourists: Uspensky cathedral for foreigners to be included in the list of “main attractions in the world”, and the Vatican includes the Okunevsky Sanctuary among the holy places of world significance. The population of the administrative center-capital of the Omsk region is 1,178,079, while the area of Omsk is only 572.9,572 km².

The millionaire city, formerly called Kuibyshev, is known for its historically important places that have become tourist attractions: Iversky convent, Lutheran church, Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Cathedral Square - now Kuibyshev Square - the first in size in Europe and the fifth in the world. Every year, hundreds of thousands of residents of the country come here to the Grushinsky Festival of Bard Song. A population of 1,170,910 people lives in the city, whose area is 382 sq. km.

10. Rostov-on-Don

Rostov, popularly called "Rostov-papa" is a city federal significance for the south of Russia. It is big, beautiful, noisy. The phrase “Rostov-papa, Odessa-mama” often hurts the ear - this is a historically established expression - both cities were criminal capitals competing with each other. With a rather small city area of 348 square kilometers, the population of Rostov is 1,119,875 people. and ranks 10th in the ranking of the largest cities in Russia by population.

Russia is a country with enough high level urbanization. Today there are 15 million-plus cities in our country. Which Russian cities are currently leading in terms of population? You will find the answer to this question in this fascinating article.

Urbanization and Russia

Is urbanization an achievement or a scourge of our time? It's difficult to answer this question. After all, this process is characterized by enormous inconsistency, provoking both positive and negative consequences.

This concept in a broad sense understands the growing role of the city in human life. This process, having burst into our lives in the twentieth century, fundamentally changed not only the reality around us, but also the person himself.

In mathematical terms, urbanization is an indicator that marks the proportion of the urban population of a country or region. Countries in which this indicator exceeds 65% are considered highly urbanized. IN Russian Federation about 73% of the population lives in cities. A list of cities in Russia can be found below.

It should be noted that the processes of urbanization in Russia took place (and are taking place) in two aspects:

The emergence of new cities that covered new areas of the country.
Expansion of existing cities and the formation of large agglomerations.

History of Russian cities

In 1897, within modern Russia The all-Russian counted 430 cities. Most of them were small towns; at that time there were only seven large ones. And they were all up to the line Ural mountains. But in Irkutsk - the current center of Siberia - there were barely 50 thousand inhabitants.

A century later, the situation with cities in Russia has changed dramatically. It is quite possible that the main reason for this was the completely reasonable regional policy pursued by Soviet authorities in the twentieth century. One way or another, by 1997 the number of cities in the country had increased to 1087, and the share of the urban population had grown to 73 percent. At the same time, the number of cities increased twenty-three times! And today almost 50% of the total population of Russia lives in them.

Thus, only a hundred years have passed, and Russia has transformed from a country of villages into a state of big cities.

Russia is a country of megacities

Largest cities Russia's population is distributed quite unevenly across its territory. Most of them are located in the most populated part of the country. Moreover, in Russia there is a steady trend towards the formation of agglomerations. It is they who form the framework network (socio-economic and cultural) on which the entire settlement system, as well as the country’s economy, is strung.

850 cities (out of 1087) are located within European Russia and the Urals. In terms of area, this is only 25% of the state's territory. But in the vast Siberian and Far Eastern expanses there are only 250 cities. This nuance extremely complicates the process of development of the Asian part of Russia: the shortage of large megacities is felt especially acutely here. After all, there are colossal mineral deposits here. However, there is simply no one to develop them.

The Russian North also cannot boast of a dense network of large cities. This region is also characterized by focal population distribution. The same can be said about the south of the country, where only lonely and brave daredevil cities “survive” in the mountainous and foothill regions.

So can Russia be called a country of big cities? Of course yes. Nevertheless, in this country, with its vast expanses and colossal natural resources, there is still a shortage of large cities.

The largest cities in Russia by population: TOP-5

As mentioned above, in Russia as of 2015 there are 15 million-plus cities. As is known, this title is given to a locality whose population exceeds one million.

So, we list the largest cities in Russia by population:

Moscow (from 12 to 14 million inhabitants according to various sources).
St. Petersburg (5.13 million people).
Novosibirsk (1.54 million people).
Yekaterinburg (1.45 million people).
Nizhny Novgorod (1.27 million people).

If you carefully analyze the population (namely, its upper part), you can notice one interesting feature. It's about about a fairly large gap in the number of residents between the first, second and third lines of this rating.

Thus, over twelve million people live in the capital, and about five million in St. Petersburg. But the third largest city in Russia - Novosibirsk - is inhabited by only one and a half million inhabitants.

Moscow is the largest metropolis on the planet

The capital of the Russian Federation is one of the largest megacities in the world. It is very difficult to say how many residents live in Moscow. Official sources talk about twelve million people, unofficial sources give other figures: from thirteen to fifteen million. Experts, in turn, predict that in the coming decades the population of Moscow may even increase to twenty million people.

Moscow is included in the list of 25 so-called “global” cities (according to Foreign Policy magazine). These are the cities that make the most significant contribution to the development of world civilization.

Moscow is not only a significant industrial, political, scientific, educational and financial center of Europe, but also a tourist center. Four sites of the Russian capital are included in the UNESCO heritage list.

In conclusion...

In total, approximately 25% of the country’s population lives in 15 million-plus cities in Russia. And all these cities continue to attract everything more people.

The largest cities in Russia by population are, of course, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. All of them have significant industrial, cultural, as well as scientific and educational potential.

According to the All-Russian Population Census, as of October 14, 2010, there were 1,287 urban-type settlements in Russia. Of these, 206 have a population of more than 10 thousand inhabitants. No. Urban settlement Region Population, thousand people (2002)… …Wikipedia

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Moscow, July 19 - “News. Economy". Every year the population of Russian cities is increasing. Demography is one of the main economic indicators of urban development, so it is important to monitor the dynamics of population changes. INNOV has prepared a list of the largest cities in Russia. The population of cities was used as the main indicator. According to Rosstat, large cities in Russia can be divided into several groups according to population size. Among them are cities with a population of 1.5 million to 500 thousand inhabitants (15 cities), 43 cities with a population of 500 thousand to 250 thousand inhabitants, and 90 cities with a population of 250 thousand to 100 thousand people. Below we present the top 10 largest cities in Russia. 1. Moscow

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 12,330,126 Change since 2015: +1.09% Moscow is the capital of the Russian Federation, a city of federal significance, the administrative center of the Central Federal District and the center of the Moscow Region, which it is not part of. The largest city in Russia by population and its subject, the most populous of the cities located entirely in Europe, is among the top ten cities in the world by population. Center of the Moscow urban agglomeration. 2. St. Petersburg

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 5,225,690 Change since 2015: +0.65% St. Petersburg is the second most populous city in Russia. City of federal significance. Administrative center of the Northwestern Federal District and Leningrad region. St. Petersburg is the northernmost city in the world with a population of more than one million people. Among cities entirely located in Europe, St. Petersburg is the third most populous and also the first non-capital city in terms of population. 3. Novosibirsk

Population: (as of January 1, 2016): 1,584,138 Change since 2015: +1.09% Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia by population and thirteenth by area, and has the status of an urban district. Administrative center of the Siberian Federal District, Novosibirsk region and the Novosibirsk region that is part of it; the city is the center of the Novosibirsk agglomeration. Trade, business, cultural, industrial, transport and science center federal significance. 4. Ekaterinburg

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,444,439 Change since 2015: 1.15% Ekaterinburg is a city in Russia, the administrative center of the Ural Federal District and the Sverdlovsk Region. It is the largest administrative, cultural, scientific and educational center of the Ural region. Ekaterinburg is the fourth most populous city (after Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk) in Russia. The Yekaterinburg agglomeration is the fourth largest agglomeration in Russia. It is one of the three most developed post-industrial agglomerations in the country. 5. Nizhny Novgorod

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,266,871 Change since 2015: -0.07% Nizhny Novgorod is a city in central Russia, administrative center of the Volga Federal District and Nizhny Novgorod Region. Nizhny Novgorod is an important economic, industrial, scientific, educational and cultural center of Russia, the largest transport hub and government center of the entire Volga Federal District. The city is one of the main destinations for river tourism in Russia. The historical part of the city is rich in attractions and is a popular tourist center. 6. Kazan

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,216,965 Change since 2015: +0.94% Kazan is a city in the Russian Federation, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, a large port on the left bank of the Volga River, at the confluence of the Kazanka River. One of the largest religious, economic, political, scientific, educational, cultural and sports centers in Russia. The Kazan Kremlin is among the objects World Heritage UNESCO. The city has a registered brand “the third capital of Russia”. Kazan is the largest city in the Volga economic region. A compact spatial grouping of settlements has formed around Kazan, constituting one of the largest urban agglomerations in the Russian Federation. 7. Chelyabinsk

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,191,994 Change since 2015: +0.73% Chelyabinsk is the seventh largest city in the Russian Federation by number of inhabitants, the fourteenth largest by area, administrative center Chelyabinsk region. Chelyabinsk is the seventh largest city in the Russian Federation by population and the second in the Ural Federal District. In 2016, a forecast was made according to which the population of Chelyabinsk should decline from this year, but the number of residents continues to grow. 8. Omsk

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,178,079 Change since 2015: +0.36% Omsk is one of the largest cities in Russia, the administrative center of the Omsk region, located at the confluence of the Irtysh and Om rivers. Omsk is a large industrial center with enterprises in various industries, including defense and aerospace. It is a million-plus city, the second most populous in Siberia and the eighth in Russia. The Omsk agglomeration has more than 1.2 million people. 9. Samara

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,170,910 Change since 2015: -0.08% Samara is a city in the Middle Volga region of Russia, the center of the Volga economic region and the Samara region, forms the Samara urban district. It is the ninth most populous city in Russia. Over 2.7 million people live within the agglomeration (the third most populous in Russia). A large economic, transport, scientific, educational and cultural center. Main industries: mechanical engineering, oil refining and food industry. 10. Rostov-on-Don

Population (as of January 1, 2016): 1,119,875 Change since 2015: +0.45% Rostov-on-Don is the largest city in the south of the Russian Federation, the administrative center of the Southern Federal District and Rostov region. With a population of 1,119,875 people, it is the tenth most populous city in Russia. It is also the 30th most populous city in Europe. Ranks 1st among cities in the Southern Federal District. Over 2.16 million people live within the Rostov agglomeration (the fourth largest agglomeration in the country), the Rostov-Shakhtinsk polycentric agglomeration-conurbation has about 2.7 million inhabitants (the third largest in the country). The city is a large administrative, cultural, scientific, educational, industrial center and the most important transport hub in the South of Russia. Unofficially, Rostov is called the “Gateway of the Caucasus” and the southern capital of Russia.