Prague

Prague functions as the circulatory system's heart for the Czech economy—a concentrated node through which capital, talent, and information must flow. The medieval trading crossroads that emerged at this Vltava River ford has undergone successive metabolic transformations: from Habsburg administrative center to industrial hub to post-communist service economy. Today, Prague exhibits the hyper-specialization of a mature organ: with 60,000 IT specialists and negligible unemployment below 1%, it has become Central Europe's most concentrated tech ecosystem. The city attracts talent through classic source-sink dynamics—young workers flow from peripheral regions toward higher wages that can be 40% above national average. This concentration creates both efficiency (clustering of complementary skills) and vulnerability (housing costs that exceed regional incomes by multiples). Prague's economy mirrors brain tissue: high metabolic demand, extreme sensitivity to disruption, and outsized influence on the entire organism's function.