Trying to move to escape America’s car-centric hell. The Netherlands is pretty high on the list but I wanted to explore other options. How do the following countries and their cities fair in terms of urbanism:
-Ireland
-Spain
-Belgium
-France
-Denmark
-Portugal
-Sweden
I could list more but I’ll be here all night.
Sweden is basically Europe’s version of the American Midwest. For example, it’s a 10 minute walk across nothing but parking lots to get from the high density housing to the grocery store. Stockholm has around 6 story buildings and a housing crisis, which obviously follows from the lack of high density housing. Instead, all of Southern Sweden is one giant blob of suburban sprawl and SJ (Swedish national rail) is as useful and cost effective as Amtrak.
Denmark is Copenhagen+ lots of suburban sprawl. Transit… existed.
Germany is very much about cars, even if their transit network is robust. You’ll never hear a German say anything good about the trains though.
France has 300km/hr high speed rail that takes you most places you’d want to go, but you have to switch to local regional trains for smaller destinations. No complaints. €2 tickets one weekend a month too.
Belgium is up there with the Netherlands re: trains, but their bike infrastructure isn’t nearly as safe. It’s also like a day to walk across the whole country, so that’s not super impressive. All of BENELUX (Belgium Netherlands, Luxemburg) is half the population of the DC-NYC --Boston corridor, which also has a billion transit options (bus, train, boat, car, plane).
Honestly? You generally can’t go wrong with the Krushevkas of Poland and the Baltics. High density housing with jobs, shopping, schools, and services close by and access to transit anywhere. The soviets really loved their street cars that are still hanging in there and provide service every 10 or 15 minutes , often using nuclear power (Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania Slovenia).
Western Europe is alright but Ljubljana just turned their entire old city into a pedestrian only zone, leaving the main road for busses only. You’d never see Paris do that to the Champs-d’Elysée.
Belgrade built a whole new city across the Danube with high density housing after ww2. Unfortunately, they forgot to place the housing near any jobs which causes transit problems to this day. They also tried this thing out, which failed for the opposite reasons.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_City_Gate
Overall, Western Europe has the same affordability crisis as the US, but with lower wages and higher taxes. Granted, rents are generally lower too, but there’s a lack of high density urban housing everywhere that’s not already been gutted and turned into an empty city filled with nothing but tourists and airbnbs (Zagreb and Prague come to mind).
By Northern European standards, both Portugal and Spain are poor, so they’re great to visit, but not really ideal for escaping the US. They’ve both been building out high speed trains like crazy in preparation for some EU rules that will finally tax the pollution from airplanes in a couple years. And Lisbon inherited lots of the EU financial services sector from London during Brexit, but going that route means you’ll be gentrifying a 500 year old city to work for British hedge funds.
In general, though, the trains are pretty good, but that has a lot more to do with the logistics of trench warfare than being a thing targeted at helping working class people. That is, you can often find cheap flights that will get you to your destination faster and cheaper than the train. It’s not like there were daily passenger rail trips between France and Germany in 1904. Being able to move civilians in addition to artillery shells was just a happy byproduct.
Great summary. One small correction:
Germany is very much about cars, even if their transit network is robust.
The rail system in Germany has pretty much been unmaintained for decades. It used to be good, but the decay is showing by now and even the Deutsche Bahn says it’s less “calculating” than “guessing” when trains will arrive.
How is that a correction? I predicted that a German would respond to this by shitting on DB.
Also, those rail lines are only decades old total.
Take an Amtrak from Chicago to NYC or a 15 hour ride across Sweden in SJ. You have no idea how good DB is. As much as y’all complain, a quick Google says they are within a 6 minute window 90% of the time. The publicly funded American rail company doesn’t even own the rail it uses.
https://www.bts.gov/content/amtrak-time-performance-trends-and-hours-delay-cause
a g quick Google says they are within a 6 minute window 90% of the time.
It’s currently more in the realms of 62%. In june, it was 52%.
That the arrival times were more guesswork was a direct quote by a Bahn boardmember.
It might not be as bad as the US, but it’s still worse than most of Europe.
Spain has the 2nd largest high speed rail network in the world, larger than France, Germany, or Japan, with 4 companies competing, so prices are often low. The rest of the train network is generally quite good. Mass transit in most cities is very good. Cycle lanes are slowly being created, but Spain, except for Castile/La Mancha, which are mostly plains, is quite hilly, so not the best for cycling.
Barcelona is kinda famous for their pedestrian transformation over the last decade or two and the hiking and trains were excellent.
https://learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/overview/barcelona-superblock-initiative-barcelona-2016/
I just think an American would find the salaries for the kinds of jobs that get you visas (healthcare, tech, finance) to be pretty underwhelming, especially if OP has student loans or other debt in dollars.
Glassdoor says €66k/year for a doctor in Barcelona vs $154k/year in NYC. I assure you that anyone who can get a work visa to Spain would come out financially ahead in the US by a long shot. It also becomes pretty hard to travel to the US, even if it’s comfortable to live on the salary in situ. That’s not to say it isn’t totally doable. I do it.
Are public health are and vacation time nice? Yeah, but anyone with a visa-worthy job with an American passport isn’t worried about the cost of employer based healthcare and pay substantially less taxes in the US. It’s great to be rich in the US, but really sucks to to be poor. I just think the unique position of people who can get work visas raises serious questions about whether or not it’s “worth” it.
If a doctor can pocket an extra $50k/year (after college, healthcare, taxes) from the higher paying American job at the expense of paying for some human rights out of pocket, it’s hard to say that doctor shouldn’t hustle in the US for a few years first before finding a way to retire in Spain in 10 years vs working in Spain for the next 30. Visas for owning property or starting a small business are far more flexible and less scary than something attached to a particular employer, city, etc (work visa).
source: I am expatriate American in Europe struggling with this question daily
Yeah, I agree with the description of Sweden here. There are some really nicely designed, walkable blocks, but there are also seas of big box stores. The big city downtowns are nice, but even the good suburbs are often not very coherent. A new neighborhood will be built with high rises and a nice design, but there are no stores, and the supermarket is 10 minutes away on foot across busy roads.
There is definitely a lot of value in the “innerstans” and transit-oriented “centrums”, though.
Im not sure if density is the issue in Stockholm, or if all the suburbs just suck. (insert Paris comparison here) Stockholm’s transit system is still very radial and all the suburbs are super car dependent. There are no urban neighborhoods outside of innerstan, Hammarby, and Sundbyberg. Some new towers along the new subway stations would make a lot of sense, but you’d get an even bigger impact by having more infill development around the single family homes and “towers in the park” miljonprogram.
