RESEARCH BY THE FACULTY OF ECONOMICS: This is the city with the best quality of life in Serbia, it is neither Belgrade nor Novi Sad!

Sombor is first on the list for the quality of living conditions in Serbia, according to a new research by the Faculty of Economics in Niš. In second place is Šabac, and in third – Pirot.

Preliminary results of a citizen perception survey, which will be used to create the Best City Index for Serbia, place Sombor in the top spot, followed by Šabac and Pirot. Belgrade did not cover itself in glory at 14th position, while Zaječar remained at the very end of the list of 28 cities.

The Faculty of Economics in Niš is working on creating this ranking, with the support of the UR Wise project funded by the European Union.

Sombor first in most categories

Citizens evaluated the cities through 10 dimensions/categories and 54 indicators, reports Forbes.

Sombor was ranked first in eight out of 10, and was second in the remaining two categories. It could be said it was a convincing result. Since the citizens included in the survey only evaluated their own place of residence, it can be concluded that residents of Sombor are the proudest of their community and see better chances for progress in it than the residents of Zaječar.

They ranked the observed 10 categories according to their own view of their importance for the quality of life. For citizens, the priority is safety and healthcare. This is followed by education and human capital, and in third place is readiness to adopt digital technologies. At the tail end, but not much less important, are the economy and the labor market, where they evaluated, among other things, the possibility of finding a job. Also included were environmental protection as well as public services in local self-government.

Belgrade underperformed

Although it would be expected for the capital and largest city to be ranked highly, Belgrade underperformed significantly. It found itself only in the middle of the table – 14th place.

Professors from the Faculty of Economics, Jelena Stanković and Vesna Janković Milić, who are leading the creation of the index, explain that citizen perception is also influenced by citizen expectations, and it is possible that residents of Belgrade do not expect much from their city.

They point out that this is a subjective perception and should be treated as such. When the results of the survey on the views of the business sector are added, it is certain that the arrangement of cities on the final list will change, the professors pointed out at the presentation at the Privrednik Business Club.

As they announced, the next step will be conducting research among businesspeople, as well as further improving the methodology to obtain a complete index. The authors will methodologically assign a certain “weight” to the categories evaluated by citizens to obtain a list that is as objective as possible. The ultimate goal of creating such a ranking is to help decision-makers in local self-governments improve living conditions through better public policies.

Citizens, as explained, responded to or chose between pre-defined statements about their city. The number of respondents was chosen proportionally to the size of each city. They were also informed in advance about the purpose for which the research was being conducted.