Kvalita života: typológia Európskych miest pomocou klastrovej analýzy

Quality of life is a frequently used term to evaluate living conditions of a person or a family. Both economic and non-economic factors of the quality of life are often taken into account and the role of external environment as objectivized measure for individual life satisfaction is emphasized. Hence, in examining the quality of life, two basic approaches of subjective perception of individual emotions, or approaches based on using objectified measurement methods classifying macroeconomic, social and demographic indicators chosen to reflect “objective” life conditions can be used. Determination of groups of cities with similar subjective quality of life assessment and the spatial patterns of similarity in the European area is the main research question studied in the paper with a proposition, how apparent is a difference between the cities of western, southern Europe and former communist countries. Database for comparison descends from the primary research carried out in seventy five European and Turkish cities on a sample of 37 626 citizens in 2009. Research was conducted through a questionnaire survey in which respondents answered 24 questions and the resulting document “Survey on perceptions of quality of life in 75 European cities“ offers a basic descriptive comparison of the cities. In the article, the same survey primary data was processed using cluster analysis to classify the cities into eight groups according to similarity of citizen views. The subjective perception of the quality of life is confronted with the measurable quantitative indicators approach. The subsequent analysis examines the relation between objective and subjective assessment of quality of life. To clarify the classification of cities into clusters based on the subjective perception, four key indicators used in developing spatial typologies – GDP per capita, population, population density and the unemployment rate in the cities.