Where do South Moravians like to spend their free time, and which places need to be improved and developed? The new Sentiment Map of the Brno Metropolitan Area, launched this week by the City of Brno, seeks answers to these and other questions. For the first time, the sentiment map is focused not only on Brno itself, but on the entire Brno Metropolitan Area. Residents can participate in the online survey until 31 March 2027.
“Everyday life is not governed by municipal borders,” said Martin Příborský, the City of Brno’s representative for strategic development and metropolitan cooperation. “We live in one place, commute to work or school elsewhere, and spend our free time, perhaps, several municipalities away. It is these ties that connect Brno with its natural surroundings within the Brno Metropolitan Area, which consists of a total of 184 municipalities, including Brno.”
The emotional map will give municipal authorities access to a key source of information – the experience of people who live and work around the region. According to Příborský, the city intends to use the results to prepare a new integrated strategy for the development of the metropolitan area, and at the same time provide individual municipalities with data to use as a basis for their own planning.
Sentiment maps allow the public to voice their opinions about specific places. Respondents do not just answer standard questionnaire questions, but indicate directly on the map the locations they consider important. The survey focuses on five main topics, including where people like to spend their free time, where they would like to live, and where they see room for further development. Other questions focus on places that the public believes should be better protected from the impacts of climate change, and locations where it would be appropriate to improve transport infrastructure.
Up to five specific locations can be marked for each map question. Since working with the map and labelling points or areas is not easy on a mobile phone, the city recommends filling out the survey on a computer. The survey is anonymous and takes approximately 10–15 minutes.
The survey is open to residents of all municipalities in the Brno Metropolitan Area, including Brno, but also to people who work, study or regularly visit the area. “For the first time since the city surveys began, we are addressing not only the residents of Brno, but also people living in its hinterland,” added Petr Bořecký, Brno city councillor for participation. “This is an important shift, because people’s everyday life does not take place only within the administrative borders of cities and municipalities, and the perspective of the residents of the entire Brno metropolitan area is an important source of information for us.”
According to Bořecký, the survey results will supplement statistical and expert data with perspectives that are otherwise not easily available to municipal authorities.
Results for the entire metropolitan area
The data obtained will be useful for planning the development of the Brno Metropolitan Area and for individual municipalities, including investment strategies, improvements to public spaces and transport infrastructure, climate adaptation measures, and a variety of other issues that cross municipal borders.
The new survey follows on from the 2025 Perception Map of Brno. Connecting the outputs of both surveys will provide a more comprehensive view of the perception of Brno and its wider surroundings. Regular repetition of the survey in the future will allow municipalities to monitor how the perception of individual places and the entire metropolitan area is changing.
After the collection is complete, the results will be processed and made available to the public. The outputs will also include a story map, which will allow users to browse the results in detail for a specific location or area.
You can participate in the Emotional Map of the Brno Metropolitan Region until 31 March 2027 at this website (also available in English).
About the Brno Metropolitan Area
The Brno Metropolitan Area (BMO) includes the City of Brno and 183 municipalities in its wider hinterland, which are closely connected to the city through commuting to work, education, services, and other everyday activities. The population of this area is over 730,000. The BMO is defined by the Ministry of Regional Development for the application of the Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI) instrument. Brno has been responsible for the balanced development of the metropolitan area and coordination of joint planning since 2013. Currently, the development of the BMO is guided by the ‘Brno Metropolitan Area 2021+ Integrated Development Strategy’. Joint planning allows issues to be addressed that cross municipal borders, such as transport, the environment, housing or territorial development.
Since 2013, over 250 projects worth a total of CZK 13 billion have been supported within the BMO, almost half of which were in municipalities in the Brno hinterland.
You can find more information about BMO here.
