These are the cities where the people who make up the surveys think people ought to be happiest, not the cities where people actually are the happiest.
There are places where people are horribly unhappy, but is there really much difference between the places we are told are the happiest and places where people are just reasonably contented?
If you look closely at the survey's numbers, people who live in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland are "happy" because those people are rich and healthy and have interesting jobs and activities and know other rich and healthy people who do interesting things, but they really aren’t happy living in those cities with all the problems those cities have. They would be happy living in many different places and would be happier living somewhere else.
Exactly, x. When I was preparing to move, I looked at many “Best Places to Live” and “Best Places to Retire”-type lists. The criteria always included the currently fashionable data — LGBTQ-friendliness, diversity, mental health facilities, etc. The resulting lists were completely useless except perhaps for lefties.