Prague, Nov 12 (CTK) – People from all over the Czech Republic are moving to Prague, while the Moravia-Silesia Region in northern Moravia is becoming depopulated, yet even Prague would be losing inhabitants were it not for foreigners, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday.
It writes that Prague´s population has been growing after a long time again, but this is due to foreigners dozens of thousands of whom regularly settle in the city.
Prague has long attracted foreigners. “Thanks to this, the Czech Republic is one of the central and east European regions where biggest numbers of them live,” Josef Bernard, from the Sociological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, is quoted as saying.
The number of foreigners who came to Prague in the past decade was biggest in 2005. Most of the 36,229 new arrivals were “Ukrainians for whom Prague is the most frequent goal,” Zdenek Cermak, from the social geography and regional development department of the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague, is quoted as saying.
On the other hand, Prague has lost thousands of its “original” inhabitants who moved mainly to central Bohemia, which encircles the capital.
The Central Bohemia Region, together with South Bohemia and Plzen regions are the sole out of the total of 14 Czech regions whose population is growing, though the increases count in hundreds only, MfD writes.
It writes that the main attraction of South Bohemia is a good environment. People have migrated there since the 1980s.
In 2014, the number of Czechs living in Prague did not decrease for the first time in ten years. If the trend lasted, Prague could be the first large Czech town from where people will cease to leave for satellite towns.
“On the territory of the Prague-east and Prague-west districts, 1701 new flats were completed in 2014, which is a 40 percent decline compared with 2011,” Marek Vacha, head of the Prague Institute for Planning and Development, told MfD.
Cermak said most people who choose to live in the country, move to villages with maximally 2000 inhabitants.
A total of 238,000 people changed address last year, MfD writes.
ms/t/hol