Karlsruhe: City with top quality of life, but low satisfaction!

Karlsruhe: City with top quality of life, but low satisfaction!

A look at happiness in Germany's cities shows a surprising result: Karlsruhe is listed as the unhappiest city in Baden-Württemberg. According to the current “SKL Glücksatlas”, the city has improved from 39th to 38th place among 40 cities, but remains far behind the national average. The life satisfaction value in Karlsruhe is 6.61 out of 10 points - which is not exactly something to cheer about. For comparison: Kassel leads the ranking with 7.44 points, while the national average hovers above these values. Swabian reports that the survey took place between January 2022 and April 2025, with a total of 23,468 people between the ages of 16 and 78 surveyed.

Despite its heavy positioning in the satisfaction scale, Karlsruhe stands out for its excellent objective living conditions. The city scores with high incomes, a low unemployment rate and a strong infrastructure. In fact, it ranks first in quality of life rankings. This raises the question: Why does subjective life satisfaction remain so low? The reasons are varied. High costs of living and a tight supply of housing with the ninth highest rental prices in the country contribute to the dissatisfaction. In addition, citizens rate the leisure activities as unattractive, which also leads to a dissonance between objective quality of life and perceived happiness. 14.2 percent of Karlsruhe residents expressed dissatisfaction, while almost 50 percent described their satisfaction as “moderate”. In contrast, almost 36 percent feel highly satisfied, which shows an interesting dynamic in the satisfaction ratio. SKL Happiness Atlas highlights that the high proportion of single-person households also plays a role.

Comparison with other cities

A look at other cities in Baden-Württemberg confirms the picture of Karlsruhe, which lags behind in contrast to Freiburg (7.01), Mannheim (7.09) and Stuttgart (7.02). These cities have significantly higher satisfaction ratings and show that there are ways to improve the quality of life in cities that are actually attractive for their residents. This pattern of dissatisfaction, despite good objective values, runs through many large cities. For example, Munich (6.84), Dresden (6.81) and Berlin (6.62) are also in the lower half of the ranking. And at the top of the ranking are Karlsruhe, Wiesbaden (6.45) and Rostock (6.08).

There is also movement in other cities, such as Nuremberg, where life satisfaction has deteriorated to 6.62 points, which has catapulted the city to 36th place. A similar pattern is reflected here - objective living conditions are present, but subjective life satisfaction remains below average. T Online cites factors such as below-average economic development and the small number of recreational areas as critical points.

These numbers make it clear: it is often the emotional and social factors that have a major influence on our happiness. Cities like Karlsruhe, which are doing well in terms of basic living standards, must now work to bring the happiness of their residents to the fore so that the differences between objective and subjective quality of life do not continue to exist.