Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2021 number

The article deals with the population housing quality in three large industrial cities in Siberia: Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk in the late 1980s. The authors have identified four basic criteria to assess the quality of housing: an average living area size, population distribution by types of housing, availability of communal benefits in houses, as well as the distribution of living space according to the material of outer walls. By the late 1980s, the significant progress was made in providing housing for the population in major regional centers of Siberia. The most comfortable type of living space should be called individual apartments, where the amount of living space per a person was higher than in hostels, communal apartments or individual houses. They had a large set of communal benefits. The share of the population living in separate apartments in Krasnoyarsk was higher than in Novosibirsk, or Irkutsk. At the same time, Novosibirsk bypassed other cities in terms of the share of residents of communal apartments. Novosibirsk dormitories were much more comfortable than those in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk. They had both higher average indicators of living space, and were better equipped with communal benefits. The city was the educational and academic center of Siberia, so it needed high-quality dormitories. Moreover, Novosibirsk bypassed other cities in providing housing with communal goods in almost all types of premises. While almost all residents of apartments and dormitories in all three cities were provided with sewer systems, access to central heating, hot water, etc., the share of such residents in Novosibirsk was higher, and a great part of individual homes also had such conveniences. While the majority of individual houses in Krasnoyarsk had electricity at best. The share of houses built of stone or brick in Novosibirsk was higher. They were often more comfortable than houses made of other materials. However, Krasnoyarsk bypasses its western and eastern neighbors in panel houses, which were less comfortable than brick ones, but more comfortable than wooden ones. The authors conclude that, despite some deviations, the level of housing quality was relatively equal in all three cities. In the Siberian regional centers in the late 1980s, it was possible to achieve a level corresponding to the industrial society.