Research showing the annual index for the quality of life in the Czech Republic was conducted by Obce v datech in collaboration with the consulting company Deloitte. According to the survey, the best place to live is Říčany located 20 km south of the center of Prague, followed in second place by the Czech Republic’s capital.
The Quality of Life Index evaluates 206 municipalities and the capital city of Prague in terms of 29 parameters, such as health care, availability of services, quality of housing, education, and working conditions. It also evaluates transport accessibility and the existence of local associations, indicating relations between people.
The calculation of the indices is based on OECD and UN approaches to comparing the quality of life and other mathematical and statistical tools. The index takes values from 0 to 10, with the municipality ranked last in the comparison of all municipalities having a value of 0 and the one ranked first having a value of 10. The other municipalities are distributed between 0 and 10 according to the relative relationship.
Říčany is the place with the highest quality of life for the fourth time in a row, leading the ranking since its first edition. The survey’s methodology gave the town a score of 10 out of 10. Prague retained second place with a score of 9.4 out of 10, followed in third place by Brandýs nad Labem, also located near the capital, with a score of 7.8 out of 10. After Prague, Brno is the best city to live in, followed by České Budějovice, Hradec Králové and Pardubice.
At the bottom of the quality of life ranking in the Czech Republic, the worst place to live is Orlová in the Moravian-Silesian region. Other cities close to the end of the leaderboard were Karviná, also in the same region, as well as Most and Litvínov, both in the Ústi nad Labem region of North Bohemia.
“Our ranking has changed little compared to its first edition. That’s because the state is failing to reverse the structural imbalance in the Czech Republic, “said Pavel Šiška, a senior partner in Deloitte’s consulting department.
The biggest improvement was observed in Vrchlabí , a town in the Hradec Králové Region, and after that in Bystřice nad Pernštejnem, Horažďovice, Blatná and Železný Brod. All these towns moved up in the ranking by more than 50 places. According to Deloitte, the municipalities with the greatest improvement in quality of life are helped by the expansion of labor supply and the settlement of new residents due to lower housing prices. The extremely high house prices in Prague are forcing many people to search for more affordable locations that still promise an excellent quality of life.
Over the four-year life of the project, the most significant increases in rankings were in municipalities in the South Moravia and Zlín regions. Pohořelice in South Moravia has climbed the most since 2018, specifically by 91 positions, to 26th place in the ranking.
On the contrary, a long-term decrease in the value of the quality of life index can be observed in municipalities in the Karlovy Vary, Liberec, and, surprisingly, Hradec Králové Region.