You may have heard about a Russian city like Novy Urengoy: someone was passing through there, and some still live permanently today. However, if you ask a person to tell about this settlement and even show its location on the map, most will fall into a stupor. To prevent this from happening, in this article we will tell you everything about Novy Urengoy: what region it belongs to, where it is located, what its history is and what both visiting tourists and indigenous residents can pay attention to here.
Geography and climate
New Urengoy is located in the Yamalo-Nenets district of the Tyumen region. The area of the city is 221 square meters. km. The gas capital is located 2,350 km from Moscow and 450 km from Salekhard. The city is located just 60 km from the Arctic Circle and lies on the left bank of the Pur River, at its confluence with the Evo-Yahu River. The settlement is located on a flat coast. The Tamchara-Yakha and Sede-Yakha rivers flow through its territory, dividing the city into northern and southern parts. The lands around Urengoy are very swampy, and expanding the city’s borders is difficult, but it still continues to gradually reclaim pieces of land from nature.
The population of New Urengoy lives in places with a harsh climate. Two climatic zones converge here: temperate and subarctic. The average annual temperature in the city is minus 4.7 degrees. The long, 9-month winter is very severe. The thermometer can drop to minus 45. In winter there are often storms and snowstorms. The average winter temperature is around minus 20 degrees. Summer lasts only 35 days, while the air warms up to an average of +15 degrees. The city is located in a permafrost zone; in summer the soil thaws only to a depth of 1.5-2 meters. The shortest daylight hours in Novy Urengoy last just over an hour.
Infrastructure of Nur - a paradise in three dimensions
As they say, we won’t take it with one, but with the other. And if the natural conditions of the city, with their harshness, are not conducive to a joyful stay in it, then the infrastructure of New Urengoy, on the contrary, is thought out to the smallest detail for the joy and convenience of local residents. Moreover, this can be said with confidence both about transport and about the industrial and social infrastructure of Nura - a kind of paradise in three dimensions.
Thus, Novy Urengoy can safely boast of 100% availability of all means of transportation. At the same time, air transport has always been and remains the most popular in the city. Today, the local airport receives aircraft from Moscow (3-5 flights daily), the northern capital - St. Petersburg (at least a flight per week), as well as Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Salekhard, etc. During the “warm period”, seasonal flights operate between Novy Urengoy and Krasnodar, as well as Nur and Mineralnye Vody.
No less developed in the gas capital is the railway service, represented mainly by Russian Railways trains. So, a train departs from Urengoy to Moscow every day; according to this message, the train also runs on schedule. In addition, trains depart from the Urengoy station to Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, etc., and the railway connection itself plays an important role in freight turnover. The local river port, located in Korotchaevo and being a transport artery between the cities and towns of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Northern Sea Route, also plays an equally important role in the city’s economy. The Urengoy River Port bears the lion's share of cargo delivery for local construction and gas production enterprises.
The city's transport network is also very developed: in addition to the main roads crossing the territory of Nur, the city has bypass routes, and in its southern part a local viaduct was built for optimal transport interchange.
That is why there are practically no traffic jams in Novy Urengoy, with the exception of a slight congestion of the highway in the morning hours (from 7 to 9 am), and the main ones are caused either by accidents on the roads or by the “slipping” of freight trains under the viaduct. The road surface in the city itself is of high quality; moreover, in “problem areas”, repair work is carried out every summer and new asphalt is laid. In recent years, a tradition has emerged every summer to expand the highway in some area of Urengoy.
In addition, due to the city’s low supply of garages, the Urengoy administration annually increases the area of “parking spaces” near houses by increasing the driveways in front of them.
As mentioned earlier, housing and communal services are not lagging behind: the areas adjacent to houses, as well as the entrances to them, are regularly cleaned by Urengoyzhilservice employees, and in winter they are cleared of snow. Actually, this diligence is partly caused by the high prices for utilities in Nura, where, for example, 1 cubic meter of hot water costs Urengoy residents on average 104 rubles, cold water - 28 rubles, with the cost of a cubic meter of sewerage being 31 rubles. And the very “maintenance” of housing, for example, a small one-room apartment, will cost about 1,400 rubles per month; a slightly smaller amount, about 1,150 rubles, will have to be paid for its monthly heat supply. At the same time, the cost of 1 thousand cubic meters of natural gas costs Urengoy residents 2,686 rubles, which is only 27 rubles per month for the maintenance of one stove. Average prices for electricity in the city are 1.7 rubles per 1 kWh.
Social infrastructure is also very developed in Novy Urengoy. There are more than 38 preschool institutions, 24 schools in the city, including a local gymnasium, a secondary evening school and 2 elementary schools. The doors of the local school are open for children with developmental disabilities, and Urengoy youth can receive secondary vocational education in a number of local schools, including the gas industry technical school. In addition, 7 branches of Russian universities have been opened in the city, the most important among which is the Yamal Oil and Gas Institute.
Nur's healthcare sector is represented by 11 medical institutions, with the largest of them being the municipal city multidisciplinary hospital. In addition, the gas capital has 17 sports institutions, as well as a number of city palaces and cultural and sports centers.
Story
New Urengoy, whose population lives in such difficult climatic conditions, appeared on the map in 1973. But before that, the village of Urengoy existed here, not far from which a gas field was discovered in 1966. The settlement existed since 1949, where the builders of the railway from Salekhard to Igarka lived. However, with the death of Stalin, this project died out, and for some time the houses stood uninhabited. Then geologists moved into the dilapidated barracks. And only with the beginning of the development of the field, the population begins to increase.
The first inhabitants of the new city were its builders, who set up a camp 100 km from the village of Urengoy and called it “New Urengoy”. First of all, the workers installed gas heating, and then began to erect the first multi-story buildings. Then a power plant and a bakery appeared, an airport was built within a year, and two years later a railway line reached from Surgut. In 1978, industrial gas production began. Large volumes of “blue fuel” extraction ensured the rapid development of Novy Urengoy.
Already in 1980, the settlement received official city status. In 1981, the city was awarded the title of All-Union Komsomol construction site; many young people from all over the country came here. In 1983, the Urengoy - Pomary - Uzhgorod gas pipeline was launched, which opened the way for Russian gas to Western Europe. In the 90s, private capital began to invest in the region, and this had a positive impact on the development of the city. In 2004, the city “absorbed” the villages of Korotchaevo and Limbayakha. Since that time, Novy Urengoy has become the longest city in the world - its length is more than 80 km.
The beginning of the story
It’s a pity that facts about the development of cities and, in particular, Novy Urengoy are not indicated on the map of Russia - there won’t be enough space, and the purpose of these reference books is different. Few people would think of studying the historical formation of this particular settlement, and it would be in vain! The history of the city reveals a lot of interesting things: from the very beginning it was closely intertwined with the development of the Urengoy gas field, discovered in June 1966. However, in fact, the roots of the city’s formation must be sought even earlier, namely in 1949, when, by order of Stalin, construction of a transpolar railway began in the subpolar tundra zone for the movement of trains along the Salekhard-Igarka route. It was not the plan of the builders, who mostly belonged to the rest of the thousands of camp prisoners sent to build the road, to linger at the former Urengoy trading post. However, Stalin died, the construction work was curtailed and forgotten, the built tracks were called “dead,” but for Urengoy it was a turning point: it was the once unfinished railway forks that helped drillers and seismic explorers discover deposits in these lands and quickly develop them. In January 1966, the opening of a new Urengoy structure took place here. The pioneering team was a company of employees of the seismic station V. Tsybenko, which occupied the barracks of a once abandoned camp where Gulag prisoners had previously lived.
Administrative division
The official division of the city was carried out according to a simple geographical principle, the city includes such areas as the Northern Residential, Northern Industrial Zone, Southern Residential, Western Industrial Zone and Eastern Industrial Zone. The population of Novy Urengoy conventionally divides the city into two parts: the “south” and the “north”. The districts are distinguished by such components as Student, Optimists, Creators, Zvezdny, Olympic, Raduzhny, Nadezhda, Druzhba, Yagelny microdistricts. In total, today there are 32 microdistricts in the city, as well as 5 villages.
Attractions
Among the key places in Novy Urengoy, a map with the streets of which will be offered below, we can highlight the Museum of Fine Arts, a multifunctional, modern and technologically advanced station commissioned in 2015, the largest fountain in the Far North, visually reminiscent of a sail. On the roof of the shopping mall, which is designed in an eye-catching color scheme, visitors can see a model of a real rotary-wing aircraft. The city is also home to monuments and temples - real examples of architectural art and architecture (for example, the Epiphany Cathedral, built in 2015, which is the tallest building in the city).
City infrastructure
The city of Novy Urengoy was built according to modern standards, there are wide avenues and good roads. The population of Novy Urengoy is fully provided with the service enterprises and cultural institutions necessary for life. There are 7 branches of higher educational institutions and 23 secondary educational institutions operating here. The cultural needs of the population are satisfied by an art museum and several cinemas. Transport links are well developed here; this is a city in which there are almost no traffic jams. The airport, railway and river transport provide good connections between the region and other parts of the country. The population of Novy Urengoy is fully provided with medical care; there are 11 medical institutions in the city with a good level of qualifications of doctors. Sports and physical education are held in high esteem by city residents; 17 sports-oriented institutions allow 25 thousand people to regularly engage in various types of physical activity.
Education
There are many universities operating on the territory of New Urengoy, including:
- branch of the Moscow State Open University;
- branch of Tyumen Oil and Gas University;
- branch of the Tobolsk State Pedagogical Institute named after. DI. Mendeleev;
- branch of Tomsk State University of Radioelectronics and Control Systems;
- branch of the Moscow Open Social University (Institute) and others.
As you can see, here, in one of the cities of the Tyumen region, you can not only live, but do it successfully: study, work and make plans for the future.
Population dynamics
Systematic observations of the number of residents in the city have been carried out since 1979. In general, Novy Urengoy, whose population is almost always growing, shows good development. Over the entire observation period, three points of population decline were noted. This is the time from 1996 to 2000, when negative population dynamics were recorded throughout the country. The second noticeable decline occurred in 2010, when the number of city residents decreased by 14 thousand people. The third period with negative dynamics is observed today; it began in 2014, and so far the authorities have not been able to change the situation. At the beginning of 2016, the number of residents of New Urengoy was 111,163 people. Due to the large extent of the urban area, the population density here is quite low - 470 people per 1 sq. km.
Urengoy tourist
In fact, ordinary guests of the city, tourists, as well as people coming to Urengoy on business visits, for whom the closure of the gas capital meant, first of all, paperwork, could not help but rejoice at this fiasco. Today they can freely visit the city, because, despite its obvious “youth” for the city, Novy Urengoy can safely boast of the presence of many local attractions.
Guests of the city should first of all visit the local stela of New Urengoy - a symbolic monument to the gas capital, located at the entrance to the city. And of course, cross the “invisible” line - the border of the Arctic Circle, on which a unique metal monument in the form of a sphere is installed.
Also in the city you can see a themed Victory memorial, where flowers are laid on each anniversary,
get acquainted with the pedestal “Pioneers of the development of Urengoy”, located in front of one of the divisions of Urengoygazprom,
visit the local city museum of fine arts and simply relax in the green park area “Druzhba” with its luxurious sail fountain.
Nature lovers can also visit Nameless Lake, which borders a small residential area in the southern part of the city.
and, of course, travel through the local picturesque tundra, so rich in the most diverse gifts of nature: mushrooms, berries and the most delicious northern fish.
Well, for those guests who love to eat deliciously, dance and relax in style, there are dozens of Urengoy cafes, restaurants and night clubs. The restaurants “Old Castle”, “Banker”, “Polar Owl” and “Lyon” are distinguished by their special sophistication, but a stay in them may seem somewhat expensive to guests who are not accustomed to “northern” prices. Thus, a table at the Banker club will cost its visitors about 4,000 rubles: payment for tables in this club is required, and for this amount you can order about two servings of excellent shish kebab, a side dish, a couple of salads and light cocktails.
The Madagascar cafe and a number of cafes and eateries in the Hudson, Helicopter and Siberia shopping centers have more affordable prices. Here you can simply chat with friends over a cup of aromatic coffee with cinnamon and taste excellent cottage cheese pie. But the famous McDonald's is not in the city yet, but it is being successfully replaced by a cafe with a similar menu - “In Great Demand”. In the city you can relax in two bowling clubs in “Polar Owl” and “Yamal”, and lovers of active recreation can play paintball and conquer the local skald.
In winter, you can ride snowmobiles and admire the local ice town, which is built every year on the main square by genius architects. Actually, in Novy Urengoy in winter, even mini-bell towers are built from snow on Epiphany days, and on the Sede-Yakha River, ice holes are cut and fonts are installed for all Christians who want to take a dip. Well, after just a month and a half, in early to mid-March, great folk festivities begin - the Festival of the Peoples of the North, where you can taste delicious venison and kebab from northern fish, ride a sleigh in a reindeer sled and just admire the faces of those who inhabited this city long before its development.
Ethnic composition and language
Novy Urengoy is a multinational city. Due to the fact that the settlement was formed by newcomers from different parts of the country, a slightly different ethnic situation developed here than in many regions of Russia. Thus, the population of Novy Urengoy who consider themselves Russian is 64%. Almost 11% called themselves Ukrainians during the census. 5% of the total population are Tatars, 2.6% are Nogais, 2% each are Kumyks and Azerbaijanis, 1.7% are Bashkirs. The remaining ethnic groups account for less than 1% each. Despite such ethnic diversity, the main, if not the only, language of communication in the region is Russian.
Serious measures
An interesting fact is that in 2012 the city actually became closed, given that there was no actual legal basis for this. Entry into the city could only be done with a special pass. Such drastic measures were needed because the crime level in this territory was approaching a critically high level. Various terrorist organizations were active here, and therefore the situation had to be resolved on an emergency basis. There is also an unconfirmed hypothesis that this practice of a permit system was introduced to regulate population migration and limit the internal and external “turnover” of residents. Be that as it may, such a system in Urengoy, whose name translated from one of the local Nenets dialects means “lost place,” lasted about six months and then was abolished.
Sex and age characteristics of the population
In Russia, on average, the number of men everywhere is inferior to the number of women. Novy Urengoy, whose population has specific characteristics, fits into this trend, but the average preponderance is approximately 1.02 (49.3% of men and 50.7% of women), while in the country the proportion of women to men is 1.2 -1.4.
In terms of age characteristics, the region also differs from the overall Russian situation. This is a city with a large number of minors, 23% of the population are children under 15 years of age. 19% of the population are residents over working age. Thus, the dependency ratio for each working-age resident of the city is 1.4, which is lower than in many regions of the country.
Climatic conditions
So, if it has now been clarified which area Novy Urengoy belongs to, it’s time to move on to analyzing provisions that have more practical significance for humans - for example, what is the situation with the weather and average temperatures? The climate of the city can be characterized as sharply continental. What does this mean? Since this settlement is located at the intersection of 2 climatic zones of the forest-tundra zone, subarctic and temperate, there is a severe winter, the duration of which reaches 9 months, and a cool summer, which lasts on average only for a period of just over 1 month. Important factors that influence weather conditions and shape the climate include the presence of permafrost, the city’s proximity to the sea, as well as the continuous circulation of Atlantic air masses. The average temperature in January is -21.7 degrees, in June - +9.1; at the same time, the relative air humidity is 78%, and the average wind speed reaches only 3.4 m/second. Frequent temperature changes in Novy Urengoy (the map of Russia helps to analyze all the conditions and factors shaping the climate) are accompanied by blizzards, blizzards, and blizzards. Most of the flat terrain of the settlement is covered with permafrost ice, which in the summer thaws to a depth of only 1 to 2 meters!
Demographics of New Urengoy
Fertility and mortality are the most important demographic indicators of the socio-economic development of the region. In Novy Urengoy the birth rate is 15.4 for every thousand people. And the mortality rate today remains at 3.8 per thousand people. The average age of a city resident is 36 years. Thus, the population of the city of Novy Urengoy shows a natural increase, and this allows us to classify it as a growing, rejuvenating type of settlement, while throughout the country, for the most part, mortality is outpacing the birth rate. However, in terms of life expectancy, the region is not prosperous; on average, residents of Novy Urengoy live 2-3 years less than other Russians.
Criminal Novy Urengoy – gangster 90s and “clan” 2000s
By the way, a considerable share of the latter’s broadcasting is occupied by local crime reports. And if in the fateful 90s they were mainly devoted to local gang wars on the topic of “redividing an already divided world,” as well as reports about growing drug addiction, including children’s, then in the last decade, more and more often, reports about resonant conflicts based on interethnic strife. And the main participants in them are representatives of local southern diasporas, for example, the Chechen one, and “clanism” in Urengoy still remains one of the main problems of the local police.
So in 2008, during a birthday celebration, which was attended by about 10 people of Slavic nationality, a group of Caucasians of about 40 people suddenly appeared at the celebration, who subsequently started a fight using knives and shooting. As it turned out, one of the guys present at the birthday party had previously had a conflict with them, which the Caucasians decided to “resolve” at the time of their arrival. The result of the fight was the murder of a young man, Alexander Stakhov, and two more guys with knife wounds were urgently hospitalized in a local hospital.
After this incident, there were several more interethnic conflicts in the city, ending in fights and shootings. That is why later in Novy Urengoy, additional round-the-clock patrols of Nur were introduced to help the police in order to strengthen control over the criminal situation in the city.
At the beginning of 2012, steps were also taken to “close” Novy Urengoy as a city of industrial importance, to which visitors could only enter strictly by invitation or challenge. At the entrance to the city, “border” posts were set up, and inspection at the airport was supplemented by passport control. However, this practice did not last long and once again, for about the tenth time, the so-called “closure” of the city was a fiasco.
Socio-economic development of Novy Urengoy
The region has a high level of development, which is facilitated by stable work on extracting gas from the bowels of the Earth. The main occupation of the population of Novy Urengoy is work in the gas production and gas transportation industries. The region accounts for about 75% of all gas produced in the country. There are about a thousand different enterprises in the fuel and energy industry of New Urengoy.
Also, the city’s economy is developing steadily due to the service sector. Novy Urengoy has its own enterprises for the production of dairy, confectionery and meat products. Service companies also constitute a well-growing segment of the local market. Retail trade provides the greatest profits and high employment. Novy Urengoy is well supplied with socially significant enterprises and has fairly high average wages. All this makes the city an attractive place to live and have children.
Deserved status of the gas capital - enterprises and work in Novy Urengoy
In fact, Novy Urengoy received the unofficial status of the “gas capital” of Russia quite deservedly, because the leading role in the economic complex of the city belongs to the gas industry. Thus, the city-forming enterprises of Nur are such global industrial giants as Gazprom Dobycha Urengoy, Gazprom Dobycha Yamburg, a branch of Urengoy Drilling, Gazprom Podzemremont Urengoy, as well as other large enterprises such as Rospan International, " Arcticgaz", "Achimgaz", "Rosneftegaz", etc., which own more than 74% of all gas production in the Russian Federation.
It is worth noting that the fuel and energy industry of the city employs more than 80% of the city’s labor resources. At the same time, the main players in the fuel sector are Urengoygazprom, Yamburggazdobycha, Burgaz, Sibneftegaz, etc., while in the foreground in the electric power industry are Tyumenenergo, Urengoyskaya GRES, Mobile Power Stations Urengoy. and “Mobile Energy”.
Second fiddle after the fuel and energy complex in the economy of New Urengoy is played by the food industry, represented by a number of enterprises producing fish, meat and sausage, smoke-dried and dairy products, as well as various semi-finished products and bakery products. The actual production of confectionery and bakery products makes up a large part of the food industry in New Urengoy. And here it is impossible not to mention such leaders as the branch of Zapsibgaztorg - Urengoygaztorg, Yamal-plus, Ankor, Topaz and Revansh.
In the gas capital, the Novy Urengoy Water and Clean Water enterprises also produce soft drinks and drinking water, and the Assortment and Urengoygazdorstroymaterialy organizations supply local beer to the city’s shelves. In addition, about 400 retail trade enterprises, 6 food, mixed and clothing markets, as well as 36 public catering organizations and about 13 consumer services enterprises supply city residents with industrial and food products.
In recent years, namely a decade, several large shopping centers and entertainment complexes have been built in the city.
These include the Helicopter and Hudson shopping centers, which belong to the same owners and are essentially one chain based on the Anchor grocery supermarket, which is also represented in the city and in other shopping centers, for example, in the Yamal shopping and entertainment complex. .
But the pioneers include the Urengoygaztorg retail chain, whose products are presented in the large shopping centers “Siberia”, “Victoria”, “White Nights” and “Desyatochka”.
There are also chains of supermarkets for household chemicals and cosmetics in the city, such as Optima and Lyubimy, Letual, as well as large furniture stores and electronics supermarkets, including M-Video and Expert. Pharmacy chains in Novy Urengoy are represented by pharmacies “Rigla”, “Scanner”, “Health of the North”, etc.
In recent years, incredible competition has also flared up in the field of “fashion and beauty” - more than 10 beauty salons, hairdressers and ateliers have been opened in the city, as well as in the provision of legal and accounting services. The banking sector is dominated by two Russian giants - Sberbank, Gazprombank - and several largest Siberian banks Zapsibkombank, Sibneftebank, Khanty-Mansiysk Bank, etc. And all of the above for only 106 thousand inhabitants, which indicates high economic development of the city.
But the sphere of information support in Novy Urengoy is occupied by four print media and a similar number of local television and radio companies.
Employment
The unemployment situation is monitored by the Novy Urengoy Employment Center. The organization has been recording an extremely low unemployment rate for many years in a row; it is 0.5-0.6%, with the national average being 4.5%. The Employment Center (Novy Urengoy) notes that the need for workers in the city is never fully satisfied; there are always at least 15 thousand vacancies. It is difficult for people with rare specialties to find work, for example, winemakers, and women over 35 years of age with one or two higher educations also experience some difficulty in finding work in their specialty.
