Tomsk, Siberia, Russia-, November 2018 – UN-Habitat presented the preliminary results of its UN-Habitat’s City Prosperity Initiative (CPI) for Tomsk, the first Russian city to implement the urban diagnosis framework. The presentation was made during a panel discussion on “The City of the Future, the Role of the University” at Tomsk University’s Third University City Forum.

Tomsk University and UN-Habitat began working together a year ago to foster innovation in education and research, enabling urban professionals to implement sustainable urbanization projects and programmes. Through the implementation of the City Prosperity Initiative (CPI) Tomsk can access urban data and create policy recommendations aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda. This project will make it easier to replicate the CPI in other cities in Russia and the CIS countries.

Tomsk has over half a million residents and like other smaller cities in Russia, it faces challenges related to renewal of urban facilities and housing stock, an aging population and the quality of life. The CPI allows for the city to be compared to others worldwide with similar conditions in order to develop tailor-made actions to revert this situation. Aside from some data gaps, key urban data is available to calculate the CPI in Russia to date. Final results of the implementation of the CPI in Tomsk are expected to be published in early 2019.

The results will be published in Russian, demonstrating UN-Habitat’s priority of working along the Russian Federation to promote sustainable development through evidence-based policies. The City Prosperity Initiative is the United Nation’s platform for urban data, supporting evidence-based decision making and monitoring for cities and has been implemented in over 530 cities worldwide. More information is available at cpi.unhabitat.org