The Russian cities with the highest cultural capital were Petrozavodsk, Belgorod, Tomsk, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Saransk, Yakutsk, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg and Irkutsk. Experts from the Higher School of Economics came to such conclusions, Izvestia reports.
Moscow took only 28th place in the rating, and St. Petersburg – 13th. Such unexpected results are due to the fact that people in small towns have much more free time and cultural infrastructure is more in demand there, experts explain. Residents of megacities are more likely to be busy with their careers, fed up with the available choices, and therefore less likely to use the cultural benefits available to them, experts say.
The rating took into account not only the presence and diversity of “cultural” infrastructure in cities. It was also evaluated how willingly and often people use it.
“It turned out that people from the top ten cities have more chances for cultural growth. This may be due to the fact that people in small towns have much more free time,” explained Ruslan Khestanov, Head of the Culture Research Laboratory at the HSE Faculty of Urban and Regional Development.
A large share of the infrastructure did not guarantee a high place in the top. This is due to the fact that for individual citizens the speed and possibilities of accumulating cultural capital in megacities are much lower than in medium-sized cities.
“Moscow, for example, offers many opportunities, but they turn out to be unclaimed. Apparently, this is due to the satiety of the capital’s residents – few people regularly go to permanent exhibitions in museums, if we are not talking about educational programs for children. Although, of course, it cannot be said that theaters, fairs, festivals and exhibitions are empty, which is why Moscow took its place in the first half of the rating, ”explained Maria Zolotukhina, associate professor of the Department of Sociocultural Practices and Communications at the Faculty of Cultural Studies of the Russian State Humanitarian University.
Many well-educated city dwellers may not be culturally developed enough, because knowledge and culture are different things, added culturologist and writer Konstantin Kovalev-Sluchevsky. “You need to understand that culture is not quantity, but quality, not breadth, but depth. Therefore, a person living on the periphery can be much more cultured than a resident of a metropolis,” the expert noted.
According to him, residents of big cities are slowly accumulating cultural capital due to the colossal employment, a large amount of information that is falling from all sides. And in small towns, people have time to calmly sit down and sort out the issues that interest them.
Source: Rosbalt
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