Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm in a fortunate position to bring some reality check to this topic as I'm a European who traveled the US between 2007 and 2017 by car, been in 17 states from East Coast to West Coast including the deep South - hundreds of small towns, mid-sized cities and the famous metropolises. And I also traveled Europe extensively.
Although I don't know about the most current state as of 2023 after all the lockdowns and how the US has been affected by that, Europe has fully recovered that's for sure.
What I noticed while traveling from NYC to LA all along the coast across the South is that mid-sized cities in the US are generally ghost tones after business hours which is unusual and creepy for a European. I kept asking myself when arriving in a city like Montgomery AL, Beaumont TX, Fayetteville NC or Baton Rogue LA (all with a population of about 200.000 which is considered a big bustling 0-24 city in the EU) in the evening hours, where the hell are the people?? Later I realized that people are up and around but instead of being in the city center, Americans are passing their time in those shopping mall & fast food & gas station conglomerates that are usually located by the highway entrances far outside of the city centers. So the days of those bustling downtown life that I've seen in the older American movies (you know, young guys cruising along Main Street, late night dive bars, diners, movie theaters) are long gone.
Smaller towns were even more desolate, there is a desperate feeling of total nothingness: empty storefronts, old run down movie theaters, sad remnants of a different era. It's a shame because those wild west style old towns have an incredibly unique character.
In terms of liveliness and social & cultural life even the big metropolises like LA or NYC are far behind compared to even to smaller Central EU capitals like Budapest or Prague. These old European cities are much smaller but has a bustling 0-24 lifestyle and there are interesting art and music venues, exhibitions all day, every day. Similar to how perhaps NYC was decades ago just without the insane crime rate. Small cheap mom & pop shops are still alive and well, you can find a jazz club or a small art movie theater in every other street corner, you have plenty of small venues for every taste and style imaginable. Young people are up and around 0-24 - it's just safe around here in the city because of density. In NYC all I could see was CVS pharmacies, Walgreens, Whole Foods, smoke shops and that's it. No mom & pop stores or crazy second hand shops, diners, dive bars, small venues, the things I expected from watching all the old school movies. I'm sure if you are a millionaire though you can have a good time there. I personally would take a crazy '80s Time Square any day over the commercialized plastic Disnified dystopia that it is now. Or the Soho or Lower East Side from the same era full of exciting artistic stuff instead this big boring pretentious emptiness.
I liked New Orleans the most. It's the most unique city in the US and by far. I know about the crime but that city is like nothing else in the world. The old French Quarter is still fully preserved, it's full of great blues and jazz venues, old-school neon lights all over town, mom & pop shops, exhibitions, the street car is still going. A city of truly unique vibe and history + it's visually mind blowing while also being a little wild because of the Haitian religious influences that are also still preserved to these days. The garden district is also beautiful with all those old colonial style mansions. What an atmosphere! Incredible city.
Overall I'm still in love with America. I like that overall wild west feeling, the sense of freedom when traveling along highways through endless deserts, canyons and that people are much more talkative and friendly compared to European people. But social life is absolutely incomparable between the US and the EU.
YES YES and YES
Americans literally just want to rot in their detached homes, alone, watching Youtube and getting their Chick-Fil-A delivered.
Very good and accurate observations IMO. I've lived and worked 15 years in S. America. Asia, Europe and the ME and owned property in Spain so I've gotten a pretty good view of the world as well.
In my opinion, the US has two advantages over most of Europe in pay and overall friendliness. Europe offers lower crime, better food, lower cost (currently), and a better overall lifestyle balance.
I will say the city I live next to (Phoenix) suffers little of the terrible afflictions of most US cities and the actual suburb I live (Gilbert) is amazing with low crime, clean, great schools, nice restaurants and a great lifestyle in general.
Good stuff.
The COL bit across Europe varies wildly as it does in the US (Manhattan vs. Kingman AZ / Zurich vs. maybe Matera Italy).
The pay thing can be shocking for people who don't pay attention.
The OP is working a gag across the board. He's posted exactly the same bit at least twice. And he simply ignores hard data that crushes some of his claims.
Keep in mind The OECD is a well left of center outfit based in Paris. Note they believe US QOL is BETTER than UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria etc. and roughly equal to Luxembourg, Denmark, Canada and Auz.
Americans literally just want to rot in their detached homes, alone, watching Youtube and getting their Chick-Fil-A delivered.
More like want to LIVE in detached home far, far, far away from woke culture and spend as much time as possible hiking, walking, driving, and being in the wilds and countryside. I wouldn't give you a plug nickel for your city "social life/activities." And as far as a residence is concerned, I couldn't think of a worse torture than being housed in the same building with fifty inconsiderate jerkoffs who do nothing but make noise, chaos, and everyone else around them miserable. It's bad enough in a "detached home."
Wait a minute. An article from what is apparently a real estate publication? I wouldn't believe a word in it if it was uttered on a stack of bibles. Yes, I have had dealings w/ Realtors. Never again. Everything that is in a real estate publication is about pimping the properties that they want to make look good. A real estate publication knows zero about entire cities.
Americans literally just want to rot in their detached homes, alone, watching Youtube and getting their Chick-Fil-A delivered.
No, no, and another no.
We are not sitting around watching YouTube and Chick-fil-A. Instead we are raising our families and engaging with our extended families. We are busy taking our children and grandchildren to all of their activities. We gather at the baseball, football or soccer fields or at the gym for basketball games. We are busy attending church and going to community gatherings. We cook our own food even if it means putting it in the crock pot before we leave for the day.
We don’t value living in apartments in the city like mice stuck in a maze. We value our freedom. Our outdoor activities don’t evolve around going to crowded parks the size of postage stamps. We like going to the lake, exploring in the forest or just being in wide open outdoor spaces where the view isn’t cluttered with high rise buildings. We seldom have a need to go downtown. Some of us avoid it like the plague.
What we don’t do is belittle the folks that want to live in the maze. That’s their choice. It’s just not for all of us.
I don't think there is as much thug culture over there and not nearly as many thug culture excusers/supporters.
This. And note the European cities that are having problems are the cities that adopted multiculturalism and/or have large populations of non-western foreigners. For Paris, it's North Africans; for Germany, it's Turks.
My friend married a German girl in the 80s and she and her German friends were always complaining about how their cities that had large populations of Turks eventually became crime-ridden. Turkish immigration was encouraged in Germany for the same reason Mexican immigration is encouraged in the U.S. -- a cheap labor force. Of course, the people end-up subsidizing that labor force on behalf of business and as their numbers increase, so does crime.
This. And note the European cities that are having problems are the cities that adopted multiculturalism and/or have large populations of non-western foreigners. For Paris, it's North Africans; for Germany, it's Turks.
My friend married a German girl in the 80s and she and her German friends were always complaining about how their cities that had large populations of Turks eventually became crime-ridden. Turkish immigration was encouraged in Germany for the same reason Mexican immigration is encouraged in the U.S. -- a cheap labor force. Of course, the people end-up subsidizing that labor force on behalf of business and as their numbers increase, so does crime.
Off topic, but Turkish immigration to Germany was first encouraged after WWII when, due to so many German males either killed in the war or disabled with war injuries, they had such dire shortages of male workers for factories and such that they decided to get workers from Turkey, which was was a relatively nearby source of eager emigrants who were relatively unaffected by the war.
Off topic, but Turkish immigration to Germany was first encouraged after WWII when, due to so many German males either killed in the war or disabled with war injuries, they had such dire shortages of male workers for factories and such that they decided to get workers from Turkey, which was was a relatively nearby source of eager emigrants who were relatively unaffected by the war.
Germany and Turkey were allies in WWI, of course. But the Turkish immigration numbers were fairly small until about 1970, 25 years after the war ended. Then they exploded.
We are not sitting around watching YouTube and Chick-fil-A. Instead we are raising our families and engaging with our extended families. We are busy taking our children and grandchildren to all of their activities. We gather at the baseball, football or soccer fields or at the gym for basketball games. We are busy attending church and going to community gatherings. We cook our own food even if it means putting it in the crock pot before we leave for the day.
We don’t value living in apartments in the city like mice stuck in a maze. We value our freedom. Our outdoor activities don’t evolve around going to crowded parks the size of postage stamps. We like going to the lake, exploring in the forest or just being in wide open outdoor spaces where the view isn’t cluttered with high rise buildings. We seldom have a need to go downtown. Some of us avoid it like the plague.
What we don’t do is belittle the folks that want to live in the maze. That’s their choice. It’s just not for all of us.
^^^sanity rising^^^
More & more Americans are fleeing the big cities, & finding the more serene existence in Suburbia, & beyond.
Work-from-home is enabling the population shift, & is killing the big ciities tax base...NYC is losing Billions/yr in taxable income a residents flee.
European cities are not being hit as hard by work-from-home. They've learned to live in higher density cities harmoniously, than Democrats here have.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
