Kazan is the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan and is one of Russia's rapidly developing industrial, research and trade centres.
Having a thousand-year history and existing at the junction of Europe and Asia, Kazan has long been a trade mediator between East and West. Today, Kazan is a large hub of railway, automobile, water, air and pipeline transport routes. The city occupies an area of 613 square kilometers and has a population of 1.310 million people, with the youth accounting for more than 35%.
Kazan's industrial backbone is made up of machine engineering, chemical, petrochemical, light and food industries. The city's largest industrial facilities are Kazanorgsintez, Russia's major exporter of polyethylene with a 38% share in the country's total production; the Kazan Helicopter Plant, which manufactures Mi helicopters, and the Gorbunov Kazan Aircraft Production Association, which manufactures Tupolev short- and medium-range aircraft.
Under a resolution of the government of the Russian Federation, Kazan was included in a list of six cities where high technology parks would be established during the period from 2006 to 2010. The city is now building a system for developing the innovative infrastructure, including technology parks and technopolises, business incubators, investment and venture capital financing as well as a subsystem for supporting innovative start-up companies.
Kazan has 49 institutions of higher education and 25 professional educational institutions with a total of over 140,000 students. The city takes care to develop professional sports and to improve the population's physical fitness. As part of the preparations for the 2013 Universiade, Kazan is implementing a municipal programme for the development of sports and physical fitness from 2007 through 2012, according to which the number of people regularly practicing physical exercise and participating in sports is expected to double by 2013.
Possibly, that is the reason why Kazan's sports teams have been so successful: the football club Rubin have won the Russian Premier League twice, the ice hockey club Ak Bars have won the Continental Hockey League (KHL) twice, the volleyball club Zenit have been the winner of Russia's championship and the basketball club Unics have been the winner of the Russian Basketball Cup.