This article proposes moving beyond the tyranny of economic imperatives towards a human needs-based framework to assess cities and envision their development. Existing calls for such a transition lack a foundation able to capture the various dimensions of human life in cities, which can be provided by the concept of human needs. We ask whether cities deliver satisfiers that make them good places to cater for the full range of human needs in a similar way to how they cater for economic needs. The article develops a framework that allows us to address that question. We show how the main debates in human needs theory are illustrated by urban phenomena, and search for a human needs model which is able to advance those debates and tackle the problem specifically in cities. Then we highlight the specifically urban aspects of needs satisfaction processes and construct a table of indicators to assess how cities fare in that respect, ensuring global comparability as to whether, as well as local contextualisation as to how, needs are satisfied.