How we calculate the traffic lights
For many places we show up to three traffic lights: quality of life, accessibility and value for money. They help you see how a place stands compared with the rest of its country. We show lights and short reasons only, never scores or rankings.
What the lights mean
- Quality of life
- How well the place is supplied with health care, education, services, culture, sport, green space and public transport for the number of its residents, and its air quality where there is a measuring station.
- Accessibility
- How close the place is to larger cities, an airport, a motorway and the sea. A small place next to a big city can do well here even if it has few services of its own.
- Value for money
- Compares the typical price per m² with the price we would expect for a place of that size, quality of life and accessibility. Favourable means cheaper than expected, expensive for what it offers means dearer than expected. It is shown only where our price statistics are reliable enough.
The principle
- Every measure is compared only with other places in the same country, because open data is filled in differently from country to country. Lights are therefore never comparable across borders.
- Things are counted inside the administrative boundary of the place and set against its number of residents. Small places are smoothed towards the country average, so one clinic more or less does not decide the result.
- The light is green for the top third of places in the country, yellow for the middle third and red for the bottom third. For value for money it depends on how far the actual price is from the expected one.
- Where data is missing we do not guess. A place without enough data has no light.
Sources
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL): facilities, boundaries, airports, motorway junctions, coast and ski areas. © OpenStreetMap contributors.
- Wikidata (CC0): population, area and other basic facts.
- European Environment Agency (EEA): air quality measurements from official stations.
- Statistical offices: RZS (Serbia), DZS (Croatia), BHAS (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and MONSTAT (Montenegro), population census results.
- Our own statistics of prices and rents, based on listings collected from many sources.
The lights are an informational estimate based on public data and may contain errors. They are not advice. Check everything yourself before you decide.