ASSESSMENT OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF ENVIRONMENT AL AND SOCIAL FACTORS TO LIVEABILITY IN MOSCOW
Liveability of cities and urban space quality are receiving the increasing attention in contemporary world. Urban liveability is an objective condition and subjective perception of physical and mental health, safety and convenience of the current state of a city by its residents. AHP method, widely used for scientific investigations, was applied to assess the liveability of a study area including several M oscow districts, of New Moscow as well. The results of opinion polls and sociological surveys were used to improve pair-wise comparison method. Six groups of environmental and social factors were ranked on t he basis of calculated weights. In general, social factors, accounting for 65,5% (transport accessibili ty 39,1% and accessibility of infrastructure facilities 26,4% of the total) are more essential than ecologica l ones which account for 34,5% (environmental contamination 8,9%, green areas accessibility and quality 11, 5%, noise pollution 11,7%, adverse geomorphologic processes 2,4%). The results of the assessment may be used in urban planning. The spatial features of liveability were analyzed using GIS software. Liveab ility of every residential building within the area under study was evaluated basing on the factors’ weights. Assessment schemes of case study area were designed for each factor. New Moscow and Moscow within its old boundaries (before 01.07.2012) are considerably different: the newly-annexed territories are less comfortable because of poorer accessibility of transport and infrastructure facilities, higher noise pollution and environment contamination. It has been revealed, that multistoried buildings of Solntsevo and No vo- Peredelkino are the most liveable, while low buildings in the neighborhood of Vnukovo district and V nukovo village are the least liveable.