Благоустройство городской среды и методы его оценки

Вопросы государственного и муниципального управления. 2025. № 3. С. 95–120.

Галкина А. Д., Plusnin J.

The article explores three approaches to assessing the level of urban environment improvement. In line with strategic planning tasks introduced by the Russian Government a decade ago, efforts to enhance the quality of life and the urban

environment quality have been guided by the theory of data-centric public administration. These efforts have been operationalized through composite indices developed by the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation and Vnesheconombank (the Ministry of Construction and VEB indices). The article provides a critical review of these tools employed since 2018. Two indices lack mutual comparability and complementarity: the Ministry of Construction index adopts a city-centric and spatially oriented perspective, focusing on the quality of the urban environment, while the VEB index is human-centric and primarily targets quality of life assessment. The authors propose an alternative methodology for evaluating urban environment improvement, grounded in an original conceptualization of well-being. At the core of this approach lies the idea of «good» as a dual-state concept, representing both the expected condition (well-being) and the achieved condition (urban improvement). Based on this framework, a new composite index has been developed to measure improvements in the urban environment. A key advantage of the proposed methodology lies in its practical simplicity and the intuitive clarity of its indicators for local residents. It is particularly well-suited for adoption by local governments in small towns and settlements as a tool for independent assessment

Keywords: благополучие, качество городской среды, городское благоустройство, соучаствующее проектирование, Participatory design, urban environment quality, well-being, Ministry of Construction index, urban environment improvement, urban environment improvement concept, Vnesheconombank-index, индекс Минстроя, ВЭБ-индекс, концепция благоустройства среды обитания