Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, studied urban areas across the EU and found that three-quarters of the population live in cities. Viewed as both a source of and solutions to current economic, social and environmental challenges, Eurostat published its report, “Urban Europe – Statistics on Cities, Towns and Suburbs”. The 13 chapters of the report studied the opportunities and challenges that cities bring and found particularly interesting figures regarding Athens, the Greek capital.
When asked if they were satisfied to live in their cities, most of the inhabitants of the EU28 capital cities said that they were. In 18 EU capitals at least 9 out of 10 were happy with their city with the highest satisfaction levels in Vilnius, where 98 percent were satisfied, Stockholm and Copenhagen that both had 97 percent levels as well as Vienna and Luxemburg at 96 percent.
The lowest satisfaction levels were in Athens where 71 percent of the population were satisfied with life, followed by Rome at 80 percent and Bucharest and Paris at 83 percent.
Despite the low levels of satisfaction, Athens had noted the largest increase in satisfaction levels from 2012 to 2015 when satisfaction had shot up from 56 percent to 71 percent (+15 percentage points). In Bucharest satisfaction had shot up 6 percentage points and 5 percentage points in Riga and Vilnius. On the other end of the spectrum, the three cities that dropped slightly by 2 percentage points in satisfaction levels were Amsterdam, Berlin and Lisbon.
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