IN BRIEF

Published: October 24, 2012 (Issue # 1732)

City Dying, Says UN

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — has been included on a UN list of the most rapidly dying cities in the world. According to the Business Insider agency, the city was ranked 11th out of 28 on the list drawn up by UN experts, web portal Fontanka.ru reported.

According to the calculations of the UN, in 1990 the population of St. Petersburg was 4.9 million people, but by 2010 that number had shrunk to 4.5 million people, meaning that the city lost eight percent of its population during that 20-year period.

The UN forecasts that the city’s population will remain at around 4.5 million until 2025.

Curiously, the UN’s data does not correlate with official Russian statistics — St. Petersburg authorities recently proclaimed the birth of the city’s five millionth resident.

St. Petersburg was not the only Russian city to appear on the list. Nizhny Novgorod was ranked fifth on the list, Saratov sixth and Perm ninth.

Samara, Ufa, Voronezh, Volgograd, Chelyabinsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk also appeared on the list.