The China Association of Mayors, the magazine Oriental Outlook and several other organizations have banded together to pinpoint the country's 10 happiest cities.

The list reads as follows: Hangzhou, Shenyang, Zhongshan, Ningbo, Qingdao, Taizhou, Zhuhai, Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu.

The residents of these cities told the project's organizers that their local municipal governments had done a great deal to improve their quality of living.

With 2.67 million questionnaires received and more than 30 million online answers, the survey should be considered authoritative in its representation of public sentiment.

The survey asked respondents whether they were satisfied with local efforts to improve residents' livelihoods, the environment, degree of life convenience, level of cultural entertainment and public security situation.

Residents can use these areas to measure how responsive their local governments have been about addressing their concerns. Looked at this way, the actual composition of the list is less important than what the survey reflects.

It seems that many middle-aged and young professionals feel reconciled to modern urban life. While there are more chances to pursue success in big cities, people also must put up with more challenges - traffic jams, polluted air, rocketing housing prices, endless construction projects, employment pressure and stress are just a few.

One of the messages this survey sends is that the happiness of urban residents matters.

Whether local administrators are wise in crafting their policies - particularly when it comes to their ability to address people's concerns about their livelihoods - has a bearing on how residents respond to the stress of living in a modern city.

The survey should be a wake-up call to city municipal governments nationwide, encouraging them to shift their attention from pure economic growth to a more comprehensive vision of how cities should provide services. This is where the real significance of the survey lies.