Quality of life in Kuopio

Satama iltavalaistuksessaan: Kallavesi, veneitä ja taustalla siintävät kaupunginvalot.

With its nearly 123,000 residents, Kuopio is just the right size to offer a perfect setting for quality living. The City is a safe, functional, and pleasant place, where the purity of nature is ubiquitous in the everyday life of an ordinary person. Quality of life is built on the balance between everyday life, work, studies, and leisure time.

“Kuopio residents consider the pleasant and safe environment, location, and practical traffic connections to be their city's greatest strengths.”

In Kuopio, each resident can build a living environment to suit them, consisting of the right balance between nature and the city, life and work, growth and safety, as well as international and local aspects. Nature is close, there is time to relax after work, everyday life is meaningful. Year after year, Kuopio holds a top position in national surveys measuring resident satisfaction and city image. This is well in line with Kuopio’s goal of being the capital of good life in 2030.

The vision of Kuopio is to be the capital of good life.

Kuopio is a city of comprehensive wellbeing, where the future is seen as an opportunity to move forward. The city offers a wide range of studies on different levels and an excellent setting for multi-location work.

A living environment with an excellent service level means all the elements needed for a good life are within reach. Thanks to its diversity, Kuopio is like a pocket-sized metropolis.

Kuopio is a dream come true for families with children. Diverse and high-class early childhood education and care together with a clean, safe, and pleasant environment provide an excellent start for life. Residential areas next to forests and inland waters provide a magnificent setting for a life close to nature, just round the corner from the city centre.

A wide range of housing in Kuopio (60,000 homes) means it’s easy to find a suitable place just for you – housing production and demand are well matched. The statistics also indicate that the likelihood of finding a home with a lake view is relatively high, as Kuopio has a calculated 40 metres of shoreline per resident.

You can recharge your batteries while enjoying vibrant market life, or take a deep and calming breath of Europe’s 6th cleanest air in the nature surrounding the City. According to a 2020 survey about Finns’ willingness to relocate and municipal image conducted by Taloustutkimus, based on the city’s overall image, Kuopio is considered to be Finland’s fifth best place to live. In attractiveness surveys Kuopio ranks second, right after Tampere.
Kuopio attracts vast numbers of tourists, businesses, and new residents. The city’s appeal is exceptional, Finland’s second strongest. What is this success story based on? What makes Kuopio so unique that everyone wants to be here?

Kuopio’s attraction is well-researched: According to Vetovoima & vaikutus (attractiveness and impact) survey conducted by T-Media Oy, when compared to the ten most populous cities in Finland, Kuopio is the second most attractive city in the country for the second year in row, right after Tampere. In the past year, the inter-municipal migration in Kuopio has been the fourth highest and net migration the twelfth highest in the country.

Current residents value Kuopio and find the city attractive. Kuopio residents consider the pleasant and safe environment, location, and practical traffic connections to be their city’s greatest strengths. Municipal services in the area are also seen as a great attraction, and the local community is appreciated – residents’ wellbeing is considered to be on a good level and other residents are perceived as nice. Also potential residents perceive Kuopio as attractive and pleasant. The best ratings from potential residents were given to the city’s environment and the community. The location of Kuopio was also thought to be good.

Success is a complex ensemble of different factors. Kuopio’s attraction is especially due to its higher education institutions, its position as a growth centre for eastern Finland, and the fact that the city is known as a seat of good life. Stunning nature, many kinds of events, and interesting tourist destinations all help in creating a mental picture of Kuopio as a great place to come and stay.

Regional attraction consists of so-called hard and soft factors. In addition to places to work and study, meaningful everyday life requires things like culture and sports opportunities. Kuopio has a great balance between hard and soft factors of attraction.

Read the article What makes Kuopio so irresistible (in Finnish)
Kuopio residents are happy. According to studies, the happiest residents in Eastern Finland live in Siilinjärvi and Kuopio. Nature, safety, and peacefulness are emphasised when examining resident wellbeing. Sense of community, for its part, enhances the perceived level of safety. (Kuntarating 2019 survey by EPSI Rating interviewed 14,000 people over 18 years of age living in Finland.)

Covid pandemic has meant regions such as Kuopio have gained in popularity. People have been looking for a better quality of life, and this has benefitted provincial centres, big cities’ surrounding municipalities, and municipalities with many holiday homes.

Kuopio looks to the future with a desire to grow. There are many new training programmes starting, and a strong development means plenty of new talents will be needed in business life. Kuopio is happy to welcome these talents and their family!

Kuopio not only attracts, but also retains – people like living in Kuopio and want to stay there. When you take a look around, you can find everything you could hope for in a meaningful life in Kuopio. In addition to work and places to study, there are sports and cultural events to be enjoyed, not to mention experiences like Tahko or Puijo and Neulamäki nature reserves.
According to a 2020 survey about Finns’ willingness to relocate and municipal image conducted by Taloustutkimus, based on the city’s overall image, Kuopio is considered to be Finland’s fifth best place to live. In the regional comparison of Eastern Finland, Kuopio is number one, and when assessing the attractiveness of the living environment, Kuopio ranked fourth. In addition to an attractive living environment, the strengths of Kuopio include safety and a good growth environment for children. Kuopio has held a top position in these factors also in previous years. (Imago 2020 survey included 61 of Finland’s largest cities and municipalities. A total of 3,101 Finns aged 15–79 responded to the survey conducted in February 2020.)

Kuopio has the third highest migration flow in Finland. The net migration in Kuopio is among the largest in the country (according to Statistics Finland data from 1/2021).

Kuopio has no big-city busyness, but manages to surprise migrants with its versatility and internationality. With remote connections, it does not matter where the actual workplace is located. The atmosphere in Kuopio is described as jovial, with plenty of time and space available. It is also easy to connect with people.