Quality of Urban Life in Socially Excluded Communities of Liberec Region

In current research on quality of life, the emphasis is on satisfaction with life that is called well-being. At the same time, many authors reject Easterlin’s paradox, which was associated with the boom in exploring the quality of life in the 1960s and1970s in the twentieth century of modern history. In the article we understand the quality of life holistically two-dimensionally as satisfaction with life and at the same time we examine the quality of place. We examine the quality of urban life in two cities of the Czech Republic, which are different size. We focus on socially excludes communities and the quality of life of their inhabitants. We understand socially excludes communities as communities of people suffering from social and material deprivation living in a place of very low quality. At the same time, we deal with the residents of these cities who do not live in socially excludes communities. In recent years, the Czech Republic has been experiencing unprecedented economic growth, resulting in the lowest unemployment rate across the European Union. Its surprising consequence (among others) is the simultaneous growth of the number of socially excluded communities that have developed in cities or be increasing the number of people facing repossessions. In line with previous findings, we expected a large difference between the satisfaction with life in the form of ill-being among residents od socially excludes communities in two towns in the Liberec region and satisfaction with life in the form of well-being among residents who do not live in socially excluded communities. We assumed the same result in the evaluation of satisfaction with the quality of place where both groups of residents of these cities live. In accordance with that, the hypothesis is formulated. Surprisingly, however, the measurement of satisfaction with life and quality of place brought the recognition of a high level of satisfaction with life and a slightly lower but still high level of quality of place by the inhabitants of socially excluded localities. The hypothesis was not confirmed. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.