Hungarian Cities Among The Best In Europe

Four Hungarian cities are among the 168 European “cultural and creative cities”, with Budapest finishing among the first five in several categories. Among the participating cities, they scored and compared the cultural life, creative economy and opportunity-creating environment based on 29 indicators – according to the information by the European Commission. 

The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor compared the cultural performance of 168 cities in 30 European countries, the detailed results of which can be viewed on an interactive online device.

The goal of this initiative is to map the cultural and creative capital in European cities based on three primary index. The first index is cultural life, with particular emphasis on the number of museums and concert halls of cities, the historical, cultural and artistic attractions on offer, as well as the citizen’s level of trust in their cities. The second field of examination was a creative economy, meaning the contribution of creative branches to the employment capacity of a particular city, which includes the number of workers in the scientific factor. Finally, they concentrated on an environment that creates opportunities, which indicates how attractive a city is to talents, how many people go to University or College, and what is the ratio of foreign residents, as well as the number of flights, trains and the traffic density.

The data were collected from several public (Eurostat, Eurobarometer, etc.) and experimental sources (e.g.: TripAdvisor), and those cities participated in the survey that had been, or will be European Culture Capitals, have won the “Creative Cities” title of UNESCO, or are home to at least two, regularly organized international festivals.

What is an “ideal” cultural and creative city like? An “ideal” city based to certain criteria is a mixture of the best performing cities. It has the cultural locations of the Irish city of Cork, shows the Parisian cultural participation and attractiveness, and is abundant in intellectual creations and innovation, similar to Eindhoven in Holland. It also has several newly created jobs in the creative industry like Umeå in Sweden, and has the main features of openness, tolerance and trust typical of Glasgow in Scotland.

In Hungary, Budapest, Győr, Pécs and Szeged are among the 168 cities, with Paris, Copenhagen, Eindhoven ad Edinburgh on the top of the list.

Budapest finished first among cities with a population of over one million, where they looked at the number of nights tourists spend there in proportion with the population. The Hungarian capital came second in the criteria of the integration of foreigners, and new businesses in the creative sector of Budapest offer the highest number of jobs compared with the number of population.

Sources: portfolio.hu, index.hu

http://www.portfolio.hu/ingatlan/varos/tobb_magyar_varos_is_az_europai_elmezonyben.4.255975.html

http://index.hu/kulfold/eurologus/2017/07/07/budapestet_gyort_pecset_es_szegedet_promozza_az_eu/