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LIVING IN SWITZERLAND

REVEALED: Which Swiss cities offer the best quality of life?

Thinking of a move or just want to rub it into your friend in another part of the country? Here's where you can find the good life in Switzerland.

Published: 26 January 2022 11:11 CET
New study ranks quality of life in nine Swiss cities, including Zurich (pictured here). Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash
Do salaries in Switzerland make up for high cost of living? Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash

While the concept of “quality of life” can be based on subjective perceptions, some factual data is also used to define and determine the well-being of the population.

The City Statistics project by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), examined a number of categories, including housing, health, personal safety, public transport, environmental quality and other factors to rate the quality of life in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Lugano, St. Gallen, Winterthur and Zurich.

Here’s a look at several categories that contribute to good life quality in each of the nine cities.

Housing

Good housing is important to overall quality of life because it fulfils basic needs for safety, feeling of protection, privacy and personal space, the FSO said.

“A high dwelling rate makes the search for and the choice of accommodation easier and influences the price of housing on offer”, the study found.

This chart shows vacancy rates in each of the nine cities.

READ MORE: Top ten tips for finding an apartment in Switzerland

Infrastructure and services

The quality of local infrastructure is an important factor because it leads to  higher efficiency, as well as overall comforts and conveniences.

This is how the cities fare in this category.

Transportation

The choice and availability of the transport network is important to satisfy daily needs such as work, shopping, and recreation, FSO noted. 

The price of monthly public transport ticket and the number of stops along each route is also taken into account.

Work-life balance

This is unquestionably a major contributing factor to the overall quality of life as it “influences well-being, contributes to productivity in the workplace and helps people remain healthy and happy”, the study found.

In this particular category, the FSO focused specifically on childcare options in each city, as it allows “to reconcile family responsibilities with their work commitments”.

READ MORE: A developing country’: Why do so few Swiss children attend childcare?

Civic engagement

“By taking part in political and social life, citizens express their needs, making a democratic contribution to political decisions”, FSO pointed out.

“This ensures that people are better informed and more easily accept political decisions. Civic engagement strengthens people’s trust in institutions and increases the effectiveness of political action”.

Environment

Pleasant surroundings are essential for good quality of life, while an environment that is contaminated with pollutants or excessive noise “affects the mental and physical health of the population”, according to the study.

This chart shows the average air pollution in the nine cities.

You can see here how these cities are doing in other categories.

And this link includes detailed information about prices and cost of living in each on the nine locations.

Quality of life is not exactly a new concept in Switzerland: the country and its cities are frequently ranked very highly in international surveys.

These are some of the findings of previous studies:

Quality of life: Which Swiss cities are the best to live in and why?

Zurich ranked world’s best city for ‘prosperity and social inclusion’

Why Bern is ranked Europe’s third ‘healthiest’ capital city

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For members

LIVING IN SWITZERLAND

REVEALED: How Switzerland’s native-English speakers are growing in number

Some Swiss cities have higher concentrations of foreign residents than others. A new study reveals where most of them live and interestingly how more and more of them are native English-speakers.

Published: 23 April 2024 15:21 CEST
REVEALED: How Switzerland's native-English speakers are growing in number

Foreigners who move to Switzerland like to settle in the cities.

This is what emerges from a new study published by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) on Tuesday.

Surprisingly, the municipality with the highest number of foreign residents is not Zurich or Geneva, but Kreuzlingen in canton Thurgau, where 56.3 percent of the population are foreigners.

Next is Rorschach in St. Gallen, where just over half (50.6 percent) of residents are foreign.

In terms of regions, however, more towns in the French-speaking part of the country have a high proportion of non-Swiss.

In the first place is the Lausanne suburb of Renens, where 49.3 percent of inhabitants are foreign.

It is followed by Geneva (49.2 percent) and its districts Meyrin (45.4 percent) and Vernier (44.8 percent). Next are Vaud municipalities of Montreux (44.2 percent) and Yverdon (37.7 percent).

The study doesn’t indicate why exactly so many immigrants move to these particular towns, but generally new arrivals tend to settle in or near places where they work.

Another interesting finding: English language is gaining ground

“If we consider non-national languages, it is striking to see that English has developed significantly,” FSO reports.

“It is today the main language of 8.1 percent of the resident population.”

This has also been shown in another FSO study in March, which indicated that  English is not only the most prevalent foreign language in Switzerland, but in some regions even ‘outperforms’ national languages.

In French-speaking Geneva, for instance, 11.8 percent of the population speak English — more than 5.7 percent who speak Italian. And in the neighbouring Vaud, 9.1 percent of residents speak English, versus 4.9 percent for both German and Italian.

In Basel-City, where the main language is German, 12.5 percent speak English, 6.1 percent Italian, and 5 percent French.

And in Zurich,10.8 percent speak English, versus only 5.8 percent for Italian and 3.2 percent French.

The ‘ winner’ however, is the German-speaking Zug, where 14.1 percent of the population over the age of 15 has English as their primary language. 

READ ALSO : Where in Switzerland is English most widely used? 

What else does the study reveal?

It shows to what extent Switzerland’s population ‘migrated’ from rural areas to cities over the past century.

While only a third of the country’s residents lived in urban regions 100 years ago, the 170 Swiss cities and their agglomerations are now home to three-quarters of the population.

As a result of this evolution, “new cities sprang up, many political and spatial boundaries were moved, and the country became increasingly urban.”

With a population of 427,000, Zurich is still the most populated city, followed by Geneva (204,000) and Basel (174,000).

And there is more: Fewer people practice religion

The proportion of people who feel they belong to a traditional religion is generally falling, FSO found.

This downward trend concerns all religions, but it is strongest among people of the Reformed Evangelical faith.

In six towns in particular — Bussigny, Crissier, and Ecublens (VD), Kloten, and Opfikon (ZH), as well as Oftringen (AR) — the drop was of more than 70 percent.
 
 READ ALSO: Why so many Swiss are quitting the church and taking their money with them

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