Municipalities and Regions as Good Places to Live: Index of Quality of Life in the Czech Republic

• Published in: Applied Research in Quality of Life Vol. 11; no. 2; pp. 553 - 570
• Main Authors: Murgaš, František, Klobučník, Michal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Cities; Families & family life; Happiness; Hierarchies; Indexes; Mortality; Political Science; Prosperity; Psychology; Quality of life; Quality of Life Research; Regions; Social Sciences; Sociology; Unemployment; Czech Republic; Good place; Index of quality of life in the Czech Republic; Gold standard of quality of life; Good life; Quality of life
• ISSN: 1871-2584; 1871-2576
• DOI: 10.1007/s11482-014-9381-8

Quality of life is associated with the term good life; when we evaluate the quality of life, we evaluate how good it is. The central element of the objective (spatial) dimension of quality of life is the phenomenon of a good place as a place in which there is lived a good life to a varying degree. The paper aims to calculate the index of quality of life at the micro-level of all 6251 municipalities in the Czech Republic based on the indicators of a gold standard and derived indices of higher hierarchical levels of districts and regions and expression of their spatial differentiation. The calculation of the index of quality of life implies that the quality of life in villages is generally higher than in the cities; however, the highest is in large cities with a population of over 100,000 and in small towns with a population of 5000 to 10,000. Quality of life in the Czech Republic is substantially spatially differentiated at all hierarchical levels.