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With such views, no wonder Gdynia is the happiest Polish city, Source: Freepik

These are the happiest Polish cities

These are the happiest Polish cities

According to 35 thousand Polish residents

A survey conducted among 35,897 Polish residents between September 2021 and February 2022 reveals the happiest Polish cities. The big winners in the ranking are Gdynia, Gdansk and Zielona Góra, while the worst-performers are Częstochowa, Kalisz and Ruda Śląska. Interestingly, over half of the respondents confirm they are happy where they live.

What makes us feel happy in a city?

Earlier this month, Otodom (a real estate website) and the ThinkCo (a real estate research lab) released an interesting report, backed by thousands of data entries and collected in the space of half a year. Assessing their cities on a scale from 1 (extremely unhappy) to 5 (completely happy), respondents ranked the places in Poland where they feel the most and the least happy.

The aim of the study was to understand what influences the subjective feeling of happiness in the city and its surroundings. For this reason, apart from the general indication of the level of happiness, the respondents also indicated which elements had a positive and negative impact on it. This way, the report brought to light some important findings about life in Polish urban settlements.

The key conclusions are that:

  • More than half of Poles (57%) are happy in their cities. On the other side of the spectrum, some 20.9% do not rate the level of happiness in their city as pretty good.
  • As much as 29% indicate access to stores as important happiness factor.
  • Respondents highly appreciated cities that provide access to nature (21.7%), are well-connected (23.9%) and have many options for entertainment and relaxation (21.1%), as well as cities that are safe (21.7%).
  • Factors that can ruin the sense of happiness in a city are the poor condition of the environment (including access to green areas, the level of street noise or clean air) (23.9%), limited access to healthcare (22.2%) and ineffective public transport and problems with commuting (22%).
  • Finally, the cost of living proved the most influential factor in determining the sense of happiness: as many as 36% of respondents indicated that finances are the greatest obstacle to happiness.

Considering the above factors, the respondents ordered the following list of 10 happiest cities in Poland:

  1. Gdynia (4,03)
  2. Gdańsk (3,96)
  3. Zielona Góra (3,95)
  4. Tychy (3,91)
  5. Bielsko-Biała (3,85)
  6. Szczecin (3,82)
  7. Rzeszów (3,76)
  8. Katowice (3,75)
  9. Poznań (3,73)
  10. Kraków (3,69)

The full ranking and description of the methodology can be found on this link (in Polish).

More on this topic:

Deputy Mayor for Life Quality of Gdynia B. Bartoszewicz: We want Gdynia to be a city of happy people

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