February 8, 2013. Yekaterinburg had 570 sq m worth of office space per 1,000 residents at the end of last year (these data are valid for Class A and B office buildings). In this respect, Yekaterinburg is a little ahead of Saint Petersburg, where there is 530 sq m worth of office space per 1,000 residents, but is still quite behind Moscow, where there is 1,200 sq m worth of office space per 1,000 residents, Ural-Germes reports.

According to this consulting company’s Director-General Alexander Zasukhin, this mostly has to do with the raw materials-oriented nature of the Russian economy.

‘In Europe, the better part of the GDP (up to 70% or more) comes from the SMEs, whereas in Russia, the SMEs-based industries are lagging behind Europe in terms of both quality and quantity, which has a direct impact on the number of companies operating within these industries. However, these are precisely these companies that create demand for office space. Another reason why Russian cities are behind their European counterparts is that the Russian up-to-date office buildings market is relatively new (15 to 20 years compared with decades in the EU member states),’ Zasukhin said.