The number of inhabitants of Prague: It is 200-300 thousand higher than the official data
Deputy mayor Petr Hlaváček (TOP 09), who is in charge of territorial development, came up with the data. The municipality has been commissioning the analysis for three years to a company that has been processing data since 2018, and even then the real number of inhabitants exceeded 1.5 million.
“According to these time-tested data, it is really necessary to start monitoring the real population of Prague at the level of 1.57 million inhabitants, i.e. 240 thousand more than recorded by the Czech Statistical Office,” said the square. According to data from September 2020, 1,328,697 inhabitants were registered, but in reality 1,566,553 boats lived in Prague.
The IPR also talks about the discrepancy
“It turns out that around 1.6 million people live permanently in Prague, and if we include residents of the Central Bohemian Region who commute to Prague every day for work, there are even 1.8 million people. However, only 1.3 million residents have permanent residence here,” said IPR director Ondřej Boháč in August 2022.
According to Boháč, the increase in population means higher financial demands on the city, which must be provided by, among other things, public transport, parking, apartments, doctors or nurseries. “So even though infrastructure costs are logically increasing, Prague is still losing out on tax revenues” added Boháč.
We are losing up to 10 billion, councilors say
According to Hlaváček, it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that Prague must realistically serve at least 200,000 more people than the budget provides according to the budgetary determination of taxes. The amount that Prague will receive is precisely the number of reported inhabitants.
“The government should therefore take this into account in the budgetary determination of taxes. Because otherwise we lose 8-10 billion crowns a year. If we had this money available in Prague, we could, for example, build new apartments, which are so desperately lacking here,” Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) says to him.
Investments do not only concern housing, but also, for example, sidewalk repairs, street cleaning or the use of public transport. “Prague takes care of another city on its territory, which with its population is close to the size of Ostrava,” Pavel Vyhnánek (Prague Sobě) commented on the apt comparison. The mayor added that I also have to take into account people who regularly commute to Prague. “There are another 200,000 commuters in Prague during peak hourstogether, in addition, around half a million people who are not permanently reported,” he provides.
Where do you commute the most?
The data also show the composition of these additional residents in individual city districts and indicate where the most commuters are concentrated. They show that the busiest part of the city is Prague 4, where over 200,000 people were moving in February 2020 even before the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic. Officially, this part of the city has around hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Petr Hlaváček explains this by saying that there are many job opportunities here, the largest part of these so-called “extra” residents were people who come here regularly.
Where did the population increase?
In addition, the data also shows, for example, how busy the city center is. Specifically, Prague 1 has only 23 reported residents, but according to that, almost 150 thousand people moved around last February.
Data from operators can also be used to illustrate how the covid-19 pandemic has limited the movement of people. Compared to the pre-virus months, I suffer from a large number of people and post office commuting to the city districts and because of the slowdown in the tourist industry of day-trippers. On the contrary, residents have just arrived, the above-mentioned Prague 4 added over 20 thousand residents from February to mid-April. However, the population increased in all city districts.
Sightseeing flight from Letňany over the territory of Prague 14. Jiří Marek
The Mayor of the capital city of Prague Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) as a guest of the program Epicentrum 5/12/2020.
Author: Blesk: MARTIN PEKÁREK