Sustainable Cities and Quality of Life: A Multi-Criteria Approach for Evaluating Perceived Satisfaction with Public Administration

This study assesses the quality of local public administration in European cities using an analytical algorithm based on the B-TOPSIS approach. It draws on the Quality of Life in European Cities survey, which includes five questions on citizens’ satisfaction with local administration, rated on a simplified four-point verbal scale with an option to skip. To process this type of group data, the study extends B-TOPSIS to handle ordinal scales, uncertainty, and missing responses. The method is applied to data from 2023 and compared with 2019 to detect temporal changes in satisfaction. The framework compensates for incomplete information, integrates a Monte Carlo-based protocol for robust results, enhances the ranking through almost first-order stochastic dominance, and supports cross-survey comparison. The results show that Zurich, Luxembourg, and Antalya rank highest in satisfaction, while Rome and Palermo rank lowest. Residents of medium-sized and very large cities report higher satisfaction, with EU and EFTA cities outperforming those in the Western Balkans. Overall, satisfaction levels have remained stable since 2019. These findings offer both methodological contributions and practical insights into governance quality and sustainability, constructing a unified performance index from dispersed survey responses.