Instead of Moving to Europe, You Could Just Live More Like a European in the U.S.

The U.S. is a wildly diverse place that offers a range of lifestyles.

Downtown Ithaca, New York. Photo Creative Commons.

Over the last two decades a lot of Americans have had the opportunity visit Europe. It’s become much more accessible to middle and upper middle class Americans — to the point where I think it almost seems easier and more doable than a vacation in your average American city, for example a Phoenix or a Los Angeles. Probably more aspirational also.

Certain European cities are positively overrun with tourists now. In Barcelona there are marches happening in the streets now complaining “over tourism” is ruining the city and driving up housing costs. I suspect there are a lot of smaller cities and towns in Italy and Greece that are almost like theme parks at this point, just a complete historic Williamsburg reenactment of what they once were.

This whole phenomenon has affected American politics and culture quite a bit. As a person who lands on the more liberal side, I’m not here to tell you there’s nothing to this American admiration of Europe, which fair or not, is extremely left-coded now. Europe is pretty great at walkable cities, something the U.S., try as it may, can’t seem to quite get right. Europe, I also think it’s fair to say, has better work-life balance (though lower individual wealth) and better health, healthier lifestyles overall, longer life expectancies, in many cases.

Also American tourists aren’t visiting the Scranton, Pennsylvania’s of Europe. They’re visiting the New York City’s and the Carmel by the Seas and the Miami Beaches of Europe — and that skews our perception a little. Because the people who visit, lots of them come from more Scranton-like places.

Anyway, I know on Substack there is a little cottage industry of people advising Americans on how to move to Europe, especially post Trump. And to each his own. But I just wanna point out that the kinda people that have the resources to pack up and move to Europe, they likely also have the wherewithal to set up their own lives in the U.S. in a way that’s more European without bothering moving thousands of miles away to a different culture (if that’s the appeal though, none of this will suffice I guess).

If you’re an American, there’s no one forcing you to drive an F-250 through the McDonald’s drive-through every morning for breakfast in exurban Dallas. If this is where your life circumstances have landed you, and you yearn to be more European — in the good ways! — there’s noting stopping you from moving to a Boston (except maybe costs!), or perhaps more affordably an Ithaca, New York. Maybe if that’s too expensive or too radical a change, you could always just hunker down in whatever your state’s closest and most-livable college town is. It’s likely a pretty great place to live and grow old.

Even in Austin or Dallas, I know for a fact, you can find neighborhoods where you can start making a good amount of your daily trips on foot. There’s nothing stopping you (except money) from starting every morning at a coffee shop where you’re a regular and you know the barista and you run into neighbors (I live in that kinda neighborhood in Cleveland). You can find that cafe culture we admire (rightly!) in Europe all across the U.S. if you’re willing to look. You could contribute to it just as a customer or you could even start one of those places yourself, if you were so inspired.

There’s also nothing stopping you from taking your foot off the accelerator a little bit on work and money, right here in the U.S. (save maybe our health insurance nightmare, which really is brutal and hard to avoid). Still, if you’re creative about it, and you’re the kind of person whose in a position to leave the whole continent for lifestyle reasons, it’s probably possible to cut back your spending and try to carve out those extra weeks of vacation that the Europeans have you envy.

If you downsize your house when you move to Ithaca, New York (theoretically), maybe you don’t have to strive as hard at work. Or maybe wherever you live, you can do with one less car, thanks to your European-lite lifestyle choices. There’s some savings there! Even just drive an old beater, since you’re DEFINITELY not doing a daily highway commute anymore, that can add up.

Because of your downshift in spending, you can take a short break between jobs. Or become more entrepreneurial, cut back on the total number of hours you work. You could invest more of that time back in community. Become known and liked in Ithaca, maybe. Contribute to the cultural changes you wish to see as aspirational in a humble way.

It might benefit you a lot too. You could spend the extra time you aren’t working making more fresh food. If you wanna use Europe for an example here, I recommend Julia Child’s memoir of bohemian foodiness. During her years as a newlywed in Paris all she was doing was cooking amazing meals and having boozy four hour dinners with friends in chic restaurants. We can never experience the post WWII Paris she knew, but can continue to inspire us and we can recreate all her recipes — if we have the time.

Whatever it is we admired about France and Child — and there’s legit a lot to admire — you can do that here, if you’re lucky enough to have the time, the flexibility. Right here in the U.S. with that extra time, you could become a patron of your local farmer’s market or get a community garden plot. You could become a patron of your little city’s own “foody” scene, own chefs. Or host dinner parties!

Julia Child spent her later years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which for all the cultural baggage you have there, is just a big (fancy!) walkable college town, perfecting her recipes, translating them for American audiences. Her success shows, this kind of thing has always held an appeal for Americans as well.