Prague voted most beautiful city in the world in Time Out magazine survey
Prague was recently voted the most beautiful city in the world and the seventh best city to live in, in a poll by city-dwellers from across the globe. The survey compiled by the lifestyle and culture magazine Time Out was based on a poll rating food and culture, community spirit, green space, and attitudes in the given city. Zoé Samin spoke to Oliver Huw from Time Out about the survey.
“Every year we launch an online poll in 60 – 70 cities around the world. This year 27,000 people took part in major cultural capitals, London, New York and so on. The survey involved 50 or so questions on city life such as: how good is your city for eating and drinking, how is it for culture, how easy is it to take a walk in green spaces…
“Whereas in normal years we would place a bigger focus on food and drink , culture and nightlife, this year we placed as much emphasis on values that have become more pronounced over the past year in connection with the coronavirus pandemic – stuff like community spirit, how neighborhoods and cities rally together, community initiatives, sustainable initiatives, the environment and so on. We then balanced that out with some insights from an expert in each region, created our own list and combined the public vote and the Time Out editor ranking for the final result in which Prague placed seventh – having been rated highly both by the editors and the public.”
How did you chose people for the poll?
“It just appeared on our social media feeds. People would see it and think – I want to take that survey, it looks interesting. It was as simple as that.”
And the reasons why Prague was ranked the seventh best city to live in?
“Well, I have here a list of the things in which Prague was deemed remarkable, like that it was rated the most beautiful city in the world, which is quite a big deal. Eighty-nine percent of people said it was easy to get around by car, which I think is the highest rating in the world, 94 percent of people in Prague rated it high for eating and drinking, 40 percent of respondents rated it high for community spirit. That does not sound impressive, but it is compared to a lot of other cities, like Rome for instance – only 14 percent of people rated it highly for community spirit, so that gives you a sense of how good the 40 percent rating is.
“Prague got quite solid scores across the board. Eighty-three percent rated it high for culture, but only 16 percent rated it as friendly, 41 percent described it as green, that’s a high score ( only a few cities beat it – Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Singapore) and it rates the fourth greenest city in the world. One area where it didn’t do so well is “progressiveness” – whatever that means- only ten percent of people described it using that word, and only 8 percent of people described it as “accepting” so that’s another reason why Prague did not climb even higher up the list. Fifty-eight percent of people said it was easy to make new friends –that’s a high score – and 86 percent said it is easy to take a walk in nature. Seventy-three percent of people said it is a relaxing city –which makes it the second most relaxing city in the world.”
