City quality of life by advanced tensor analysis

This study presents a multidimensional analysis of urban quality of life across 174 cities worldwide, focusing on key indicators of environmental, economic and social dimensions for the years 2016–2024. Leveraging an advanced variant of the Tucker3 Clustering framework, the analysis incorporates sparse variable loadings to improve factors’ inter-pretability. The model simultaneously clusters cities and constructs syn-thetic indicators for variables and years, uncovering complex patterns in urban living conditions and identifying distinct clusters of cities with shared characteristics. This research contributes to broader discussions on urban sustainability by shedding light on the interplay of economic, environmental, and social factors over time, shaping quality of life globally.