Multiple urban resource configurations underlying high city satisfaction in 83 European cities

Abstract Why do cities with different perceived living conditions receive similarly favourable evaluations from residents? Using city-level aggregates for 83 European cities from the 2023 Perception Survey on the Quality of Life in European Cities, this study examines how environmental, social, institutional and service resources combine in relation to High City Satisfaction (HCS). Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis identifies three sufficient HCS configurations, indicating that high city satisfaction is associated with more than one observed resource profile among the surveyed cities. Environmental Quality and Social Trust recur across all three configurations, but neither meets the set-theoretic criterion for individual necessity. Necessary Condition Analysis identifies sample-based ceiling effects for all six resources, with the largest effect sizes observed for Essential Public Service Quality and Local Administrative Quality. The absence of HCS is associated with a structurally different cumulative-deficit pathway centred on low Social Trust and low Local Administrative Quality. The findings distinguish three analytically distinct resource roles: recurrence in sufficient configurations, strict necessity, and constraints on outcome attainability. They also show that high city satisfaction is configurationally plural, whereas one identified pathway to its absence is organised around accumulated resource deficits.