I have always been interested in cities, but never only as destinations, collections of famous buildings or places that can be reduced to a list of attractions, restaurants and photographs taken during a short weekend away, because what fascinates me far more is the way a city can quietly influence the person living inside it, changing their routines, their level of energy, the way they build relationships, the amount of space they give themselves and sometimes even the way they imagine their own future.

Having lived in places as different as Kraków, Rotterdam, Lund, Manchester and London, while also spending a great deal of time travelling and observing how people construct their lives in different environments, I gradually became more interested in a question that most traditional city rankings are not designed to answer.

Why can one city feel strangely familiar from the first moment, even when we have no personal history there, while another can appear almost perfect on paper and still leave us with the feeling that we are only visiting someone else's life?

A city can be beautiful, safe, wealthy and internationally admired, but that does not necessarily mean that it will suit the rhythm of a particular person. We can appreciate its architecture, recognise the quality of its public transport and understand why other people love living there, while still feeling that something important is missing. In the same way, we can become deeply attached to a place that is imperfect, complicated or less practical, because its atmosphere, pace, social energy or relationship with history speaks to something in us that cannot easily be translated into statistics.

Soul City began with this idea.

At first, I imagined it as a relatively simple application that could help someone find a city suited to their lifestyle, based on factors such as budget, climate, safety, transport and professional opportunities. As I continued working on it, however, the idea became more complex and much more personal, because I realised that asking where someone could live comfortably is not the same as asking where they might genuinely feel that they belong. Those two questions can lead to the same answer, but they do not always do so. Sometimes the city that offers the most sensible conditions for the life we want to build is not the city that excites our imagination, reflects our personality or gives us the emotional feeling of having arrived somewhere important. That difference became the foundation of Soul City.

There is no single best city

One of the central principles behind the project is that there is no city that can honestly be described as the best place for everyone, because people differ in far more than their income, profession, age or preferred temperature.

We differ in the amount of stimulation we need, our tolerance for noise and disorder, our relationship with loneliness, our need for community, the importance we place on beauty, history, nature or convenience, and whether we currently need stability, reinvention, ambition, freedom, rest or the feeling of starting again.

One person can feel completely alive in a huge metropolis where several different worlds exist within the same neighbourhood and where it is possible to experience something new almost every day. The scale, anonymity and constant movement of the city can give that person a powerful sense of freedom, because nobody is watching too closely and there is always space to become someone different. For another person, exactly the same qualities can create exhaustion, disconnection and the uncomfortable feeling that life is moving too quickly to be properly experienced.

Someone may imagine that their ideal future must involve Mediterranean weather, late dinners, sunlight and spontaneous social life, while in practice they function much better in a cooler, calmer and more organised city where public services are reliable, personal space is respected and daily life follows a more predictable rhythm. Another person may have spent years making practical and responsible choices, only to discover that the place which attracts them most strongly is more chaotic, expressive and emotionally intense, because what they actually need is not another carefully controlled environment, but the opportunity to become less predictable themselves.

This is why I do not want Soul City to become another ranking that assumes everyone should want the same combination of warm weather, high salaries, low crime and attractive architecture. Those factors matter, of course, and ignoring them would make any relocation tool unrealistic, but they only become useful when they are placed within the context of an individual life. The purpose of Soul City is not to tell a user that a particular city is objectively superior. It is to show why a certain place may suit that person, which parts of their lifestyle it could support, which needs it may satisfy, what compromises it would require and why a city they had never seriously considered could potentially fit them better than the destinations they had always assumed they wanted.

Thinking about cities as personalities

While developing the project, I began thinking about cities less as locations and more as personalities, because every city has its own rhythm, its own way of communicating with the people who live there and its own relationship with time, ambition, privacy, memory, beauty and change. Edinburgh can feel literary, reserved, mysterious and slightly melancholic, like someone who does not reveal everything during the first conversation, but gradually allows you to discover more humour, warmth and history beneath the surface. Lisbon can feel bright, artistic and emotionally open, while still carrying a kind of nostalgia that does not remove its joy, but makes that joy feel more human and more fragile. Vienna can represent stability, cultural depth, elegance and the comfort of a city that appears to understand the importance of order. Tokyo can feel precise, ritualistic, anonymous and almost limitless, offering both the intensity of constant discovery and the freedom of disappearing into a place much larger than yourself. Tallinn can combine northern quietness, independence, history and digital modernity, while Medellín can communicate social warmth, movement, reinvention and the belief that an entire city can rewrite the story people both the intensity of constant discovery and the freedom of disappearing into a place much larger than yourself.

Naturally, no city has one fixed or objective personality. A tourist will experience it differently from someone who was born there, while a person who arrives during a difficult moment in their life may build an emotional relationship with the city that has very little to do with its public image. A wealthy professional, a student, a remote worker and a local family can all inhabit the same streets while living in completely different versions of the same place.

Soul City does not attempt to erase that complexity or pretend that an entire city can be scientifically summarised through a few adjectives. The personality of a city is instead used as an editorial and reflective framework, allowing the user to consider elements that are often missing from conventional comparisons.

When people research a potential destination, they usually ask which city is cheaper, safer, warmer or better connected, but they are much less likely to ask whether they want to live somewhere that encourages social closeness or protects anonymity, whether they need intensity or calm, whether they are drawn towards history and nostalgia or towards modernity and the feeling that everything is still being created. These questions may be harder to measure, but they can have an enormous influence on how everyday life feels.

Life Match and the city that supports your plans

The first part of Soul City is called Life Match, and it focuses on the practical conditions that shape everyday life.

It considers factors such as the cost of housing, general living expenses, climate, safety, public transport, career opportunities, remote working conditions, access to nature, cultural life, food, social possibilities, the size of the city and its overall pace. The aim is not simply to ask whether someone wants an affordable, safe and pleasant city, because almost everyone would choose those qualities when they are presented without context. The more meaningful question is what the user prioritises when those qualities begin to compete with one another. Would they accept a higher cost of living in exchange for better professional opportunities and stronger public services? Would they tolerate colder, darker or wetter weather if the city offered the cultural atmosphere and social values they were looking for? Would they prefer immediate access to nature, or would they rather live somewhere with a constant programme of events, exhibitions, restaurants and international communities? Do they need a fast and competitive city that pushes them towards growth, or a slower environment where it is easier to protect their personal time and build a stable routine?

Every real city involves compromise, and any system that promises perfect weather, low prices, excellent salaries, complete safety, strong infrastructure and an exciting social life in one place is likely simplifying reality to the point where the recommendation becomes meaningless. Life Match is designed to identify not only what a person likes, but which disadvantages they are more willing to accept in order to obtain the things that matter most. Its central question is simple, even if the answer is not. Where could your everyday life work best?

Soul Match and the city we cannot choose through logic alone

As the project developed, I became increasingly convinced that a practical recommendation could only provide part of the answer, because people do not choose places entirely through logic, even when they believe they are making a rational decision. Sometimes we become fascinated by a city that we cannot properly justify. We return to photographs of ordinary streets, read about its history, watch videos that show people going through completely normal days and begin imagining what our own mornings, evenings and routines might look like there. There may be no obvious career opportunity waiting for us, no financial advantage and no existing personal connection, yet the city continues to occupy a space in our imagination. Soul Match was created to explore this part of the relationship between a person and a place.

Instead of concentrating mainly on rent, salaries or transport, it asks about belonging, anonymity, reinvention, community, beauty, memory, creativity, freedom, mystery, spontaneity and the emotional pace of daily life. Some people need a city where they can disappear into the crowd, because anonymity gives them permission to escape the expectations attached to their previous identity and create themselves again. Others need familiarity, repeated encounters and the feeling that their local café, street or neighbourhood gradually recognises them, because belonging is built through small routines and faces that become known over time. One person may feel most inspired by old architecture, visible layers of history and places that appear to contain stories from many different lives, while someone else will feel lighter in a city that is open, functional, modern and less emotionally connected to the past. Some users may search for intensity because it gives them energy, while others may discover that what they truly need is softness, silence and enough mental space to notice their own thoughts.

Soul Match is not a psychological assessment and it is not an attempt to measure the human soul through a scientific formula. I would not want it to pretend to offer that kind of certainty. Its purpose is to create an intelligent and emotionally engaging experience that allows someone to reflect on needs they may never have considered while comparing cities. The question at the centre of Soul Match is not only where someone could live successfully. It is which city might feel emotionally closest to the person they are.

Complete Match and the tension between reason and desire

Complete Match combines the practical compatibility of Life Match with the emotional perspective of Soul Match, and this is where one of the most interesting elements of the entire project becomes visible. The system does not always have to produce one city as the answer to everything.

A user may discover that Vienna offers the strongest match for the life they want to build, because it provides stability, safety, cultural depth, reliable infrastructure and a high quality of everyday life, while Lisbon may represent the emotional atmosphere they are most strongly drawn towards, because it feels warmer, more spontaneous, artistic and nostalgic. I do not see this difference as a flaw that the matching system should attempt to hide. It may be the most valuable part of the result.

One city can support our career, another can answer our need for peace, while a third can reflect the person we would like to become. We can need stability while longing for spontaneity. We can be introverted while feeling fascinated by socially intense places. We can value organisation while still developing a deep attachment to cities that are imperfect, expressive and unpredictable. A simple recommendation often removes these contradictions because it is easier to present one confident answer.

Soul City is being designed to acknowledge them, because human preferences are rarely completely consistent and the difference between what we need and what we desire can reveal something important about the life we are currently living. Sometimes the same city will become the user's Life Match, Soul Match and best overall result. Sometimes the three perspectives will lead in different directions. Both outcomes can be meaningful.

A result should feel like a story

From the beginning, I have wanted the result of Soul City to become more than a percentage displayed beside the name of a destination. A statement such as "Lisbon, 86 percent match" may look visually attractive, but it does not explain why the match exists, which answers influenced it, what the city might offer the user or which difficulties could eventually become significant.

The result should feel more like a personal portrait than a score. It should explain which qualities of the city correspond with the user's preferences, what kind of daily life they could potentially build there, what may surprise them and which compromises they would need to consider. It should also be honest enough to show that even a highly compatible city can contain elements that do not suit them. The weather that contributes to Edinburgh's literary and atmospheric character can become difficult for someone strongly affected by dark winters. The intensity of Tokyo can inspire a person who needs constant discovery, but it can also become exhausting for someone searching for emotional softness and easy social connection. The openness and energy of Medellín can provide a powerful sense of community, but its pace and social expectations will not suit everyone.

I do not want Soul City to convince people that a flawless city is waiting somewhere in the world. A more realistic and useful recommendation is a place whose strengths support the user's priorities and whose disadvantages represent compromises they are genuinely prepared to make.

Building a global collection of cities

The current Soul City database includes 72 cities across 47 countries, with locations from Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania. The collection includes global capitals and enormous metropolitan areas, but also smaller historical, coastal, creative and digitally focused cities that may not appear in the most obvious relocation rankings. Each city can contain a practical profile covering living costs, climate, transport, safety, professional opportunities and lifestyle, together with editorial information about its strengths, limitations and the kinds of people who may feel comfortable there. Alongside these practical elements, the cities are being developed through emotional dimensions connected with intensity, nostalgia, social openness, anonymity, creativity, order, spontaneity, history, reinvention and the general feeling created by the place. The number of cities is not the most important measure of the project's progress.

It would be relatively easy to add hundreds of locations if each one were represented by a small set of generic statistics and repeated descriptions, but that would eventually create a large database without giving the user a meaningful experience. I would rather develop Soul City more carefully, making sure that each location has enough depth, individuality and internal logic to feel different from the others. A recommendation should not appear to have been selected from a random collection of popular destinations. The user should be able to understand why this city appeared and why another, seemingly similar place, did not.

Technology should remain in the background

Soul City naturally involves data, matching systems and technology, but I do not want it to be presented primarily as another artificial intelligence product. Technology can help organise answers, compare preferences, calculate compatibility and generate a more personalised result, but it should remain in the background. The main subject of the project is not the algorithm. It is the person using it, the city being explored and the relationship that may exist between them. I do not want users to finish the experience impressed only by the complexity of the system or convinced that an algorithm understands them better than they understand themselves. I would rather they finish with the thought that they have never considered cities in this way before, or that the result has helped them recognise a need they had previously struggled to name.

Perhaps someone will realise that they do not need more opportunities, but a slower rhythm and more control over their time. Someone else may discover that what they describe as a desire for warm weather is really a desire for social closeness and a culture that spends more time outside the home. Another user may recognise that their fascination with enormous cities comes from the possibility of anonymity and reinvention rather than from noise, crowds or endless entertainment. When technology helps someone ask these kinds of questions, it has already served a meaningful purpose.

Why we search for another place

I think most people have imagined their life in another city at least once, even if they have never seriously planned to move. We picture ourselves in a different climate, surrounded by another style of architecture and living inside a culture with a different relationship to work, community, time and everyday pleasure. Often, we are not imagining only the place. We are imagining a different version of ourselves. A new city can represent freedom, courage, peace, ambition, recovery or the possibility of beginning again without being constantly reminded of the person we were before.

Of course, changing location does not automatically solve personal problems, transform our character or guarantee happiness. We carry our habits, fears, memories and limitations with us, regardless of the distance we travel. At the same time, place matters more than we sometimes admit. Our environment influences how we spend our time, how often we leave home, how easily we meet people, how much energy we have and what kind of future feels realistic. Some cities encourage movement and social interaction, while others make it easier to slow down and protect personal space. Some strengthen ambition, while others support creativity, community or reflection.

The right environment does not remove every difficulty, but it can make certain parts of life feel more natural. Soul City is growing from this fascination with the relationship between people and places, and from my belief that choosing a city should involve more than asking where life is cheapest, warmest or safest. We should also be able to ask what kind of rhythm we need, how much anonymity feels like freedom and when it begins to feel like isolation, whether we are searching for stability or reinvention, and what kind of environment could support the person we are trying to become.

I do not know whether there is one city somewhere in the world that is perfectly designed for each of us. I do believe, however, that there are places that suit who we are now, and other places that remind us of who we would like to become.

Sometimes they will be the same city. Sometimes they will give us two completely different answers. Soul City begins somewhere between them.