Bucharest, no longer a top choice for Romanians who consider moving to a new city

About half of Romanians would not move from the city they currently live in, while most of those who would move to a new city would choose Cluj-Napoca (16%), Brasov (14%) or Timisoara (10%), according to a study published by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy (IRES). On the other hand, only 4% of respondents said they would move to Bucharest or Iasi. The study also revealed that 9% of Romanians living in big cities would prefer to live in smaller towns and 5% would move to a city similar to the one they live in today, local Adevarul reported. The young people would move to big cities while the retirees would choose the countryside. When it comes to why the Romanians would choose to move to another city, the study showed that most of them would do that because of the lack of cleanliness in their current city (21%), the poor transport infrastructure (17%), and traffic congestion and lack of jobs (9% each). A Eurostat study carried out in 83 European cities in 2015 showed that only 56% of Bucharest’s inhabitants are satisfied with the markets, squares and pedestrian areas in their city, this being one of the lowest shares registered among EU capitals. Other capital cities with low shares were Valletta (41%), Athens (49%), Rome (55%), Nicosia (56%) and Sofia (58%). On the other hand, at least 85% of inhabitants were very or rather satisfied with the markets, squares and pedestrian areas in their city if they lived in Luxembourg and Vienna (both 88%), Stockholm (87%), Ljubljana (86%) and Helsinki (85%). Most Bucharesters believe their city is not clean enough, study shows Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com