We moved in January 2025. So we’ve been in Valencia for nearly a year and a half.

Wild.

In November 2024, I wrote about what I might miss about Los Angeles.

I branded the whole idea of missing things as pretty much a bullshit concept.

To get there, I compared two definitions central to the discussion:

When you miss, you —

When you feel nostalgia, you —

So there’s a distinction that’s easy to lose sight of.

All day long, I’m constantly looking at the dictionary definitions of words we often don’t think twice about using.

In my line of work, I think it’s important.

Because when you lose sight of the distinction between—as one example—miss and nostalgia you fall into a trap that effectively drags discourse into a shallow abyss. In everything from politics to the incessant dialogue around moving abroad, people throw words around absent much, if any consideration of their meaning.

That’s part of why we end up with these basic if/then discussions about moving away from something versus moving towards something or fantastical “scouting trip” searches for some mythical place that replicates what makes you comfortable without tradeoffs. It’s the type of drivel you get from AI if you don’t know how to use it.

With the distinct meanings of miss and nostalgia (or whatever) established, you’re better equipped to have a conversation that goes beyond the empty desire to get views on YouTube or scare someone into paying for your masterclass or relocation course.

In the 2024 article, I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t miss LA, but I’d feel nostalgia for the city and the state of California that basically turned me into the person I am today:

But I will certainly feel nostalgia — a true appreciation — about living in a state where you have experiences you simply can’t have in other places. Experiences that become so part of your daily life that you can take them for granted.

But you don’t. Because, in a part of the world where an earthquake can strike at any second and where the only constant is change (even if the more things change, the more they stay the same!), you learn to not take things for granted.

I don’t take for granted the fact that my preferred mode of ride sharing has quickly become Waymo’s driverless cars.

Until they arrive in Spain — and they will — I won’t miss, but I will feel nostalgic about driverless cars…

My love of cities sparked several years of urban planning education, which focused on the physical and mental health and social components of urban living.

Those two factors have convinced me that I can take an already good life and make it better in an environment with a culture that revolves around public space and subsequent social interaction and is much, much less about the car. Car culture is one thing I won’t miss — or even feel nostalgia for — after I leave California.

I consider myself an expert in knowing the types of physical environments where I thrive.

So, at a point when I could bask in the glow of having made it in California for more than half of my life, I prefer to take what I learned here and use it to learn a new language, overcome fresh and foreign obstacles and make sense of another culture that has the potential to continue to shape who I am and want to be.

Waymo driverless cars will likely be in Madrid soon. They’re about to hit London.

Do I feel a crazy rush to use them? Not at all.

Because the existence of driverless cars in a handful of US cities is the type of thing that fuels America’s inferiority complex. The US propaganda machine loves to take isolated “advances”—self-driving cars or AI—and hold them up as examples of US innovation and subsequent superiority.

We do the same thing in our personal lives. We fixate on isolated experiences—a favorite bar, a restaurant, a driverless car ride—and give them far more weight than they deserve when evaluating the overall quality of a place or a life

It’s only after you live in another place long enough that you realize technological innovation isn’t a spectacle like SpaceX, it’s actual convenience readily visible in day-to-day life. Like putting your card down on the table to pay in the US rather than—as they’ve been doing in Canada and Europe at least since I was in my late-twenties—tapping a reader that a server brings to your table.

The list could go on, but—take it from me and the endless videos on YouTube—other parts of the world show the United States for what it is: way behind on implementing the technology that could actually make everyday tasks more convenient and improve quality of life for the population. Card readers, high-speed trains—or, just trains, real food at local markets, grocery store amenities, public space, and so on and so forth.

There’s an arc that weaves itself through this conversation.

For example,

Read those after you finish reading this.

Anyway, back to missing things.

One of the places I miss most is a dive bar in Los Angeles called the Frolic Room.

If you've never been there, it's dark, a little grimy, completely unpretentious, and exactly the type of place that’s impossible to explain to somebody who hasn't spent time there. Troy always poured me too much Fernet alongside a cold beer, usually seconds after I walked through the door more than a little stoned from my Waymo ride.

I don’t miss it because it’s objectively better than anything in Valencia.

It isn’t.

I miss it because it belonged to a specific period of my life.

That’s where people often get confused. They mistake nostalgia for evidence. They think missing something means they made the wrong decision.

It doesn’t.

It usually means that a place, a person, or a routine mattered.

The mistake is assuming that because something mattered, you should go back to it. But if you actually open the encyclopedia in your brain, you realize that experiences like drinking in a dive bar are moments in time and—often—forms of escape.

It’s easy to gloss over the fact that I started taking Waymos from our apartment to the Frolic Room because the walk was so dirty, sketchy, and even dangerous. Not being able to walk out your front door and take a 1.3-mile journey on foot and actually feel safe—that’s the type of stuff that matters and persists. And ties back to the discussion from the other day that quality of life is infrastructure, not €3 beers or beach days.

If I moved back to Los Angeles tomorrow, the Frolic Room would still be there.

The problem is that everything else would be there too.

The traffic. The cost of living. The constant feeling that ordinary life requires more effort than it should. And the tradeoffs that caused me to leave in the first place.

That’s what nostalgia conveniently edits out.

It gives you a sizzle reel. But the difference between a good and ordinary life isn’t highlights. It’s the choices you make to structure the many minutes that fill your day-to-day.

I love nostalgia—a lot actually—but it conveniently edits the stories we tell ourselves. In some cases, the resulting psychological mindfuck can lead to bad decisions—or to seeking advice in the middle of a decision from grifters and opportunists who prey on your uncertainty rather than make a genuine effort to explain it.

Nostalgia loves…

The Fernet.

The bartender.

The familiar faces.

The feeling.

But it doesn’t bring you forward in your thinking or in your experience of life.

Many people who move abroad—present company included—do it to learn, to grow, to evolve, to challenge themselves at points in their lives when comfort and the status quo can lead to stagnation. When the challenge appears, it’s easier to mentally fall back on and crave what you know. This is merely a reality of life—with relocating to a different country but one case study. We have a tendency to remember the good parts, but conveniently omit the not-so-good ones.

The part where I was taking a driverless car 1.3 miles because the walk between my apartment and one of my favorite places in the city felt unpleasant enough that I didn’t want to do it.

The part where I accepted things as normal that I no longer consider normal.

The part where daily life required more planning, more money, more effort, and more tolerance for dysfunction than it does now.

That’s the distinction.

I don’t miss Los Angeles.

I feel nostalgia for parts of Los Angeles.

Just like I feel nostalgia for parts of San Francisco.

Just like one day I’ll probably feel nostalgia for parts of Valencia.

If you’re building an interesting life, you’ll leave things behind.

Places.

Routines.

Bars.

Restaurants.

Entire versions of yourself.

That’s the story I’ve been writing for myself since I was 13.

If you never experience feeling nostalgia for any of those things, there’s a decent chance you’ve held yourself back from going anywhere worth going in the first place.

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That should probably replace “In God We Trust” on the currency.

The biggest danger Trump might present isn’t his pathetic nature and actions themselves, but the scapegoat he provides for the American people. His delusion and destruction have planted the not-so-subtle seed that—once he’s gone—somebody else will come along and save the country. The sad reality is that the country was broken long before Trump’s narcissism and infantilism took control. He’s opportunistically pouring salt in the long-open wound of a failing experiment.

Trump no longer window dresses what the United States of America is and has long forced its people to become—a nation of individualists. A classic brainwashing tactic of the American establishment is to place an adjective such as rugged in front of individualists to make it sound somehow righteous. Just like when they describe the working class from places like Chicago and Buffalo as “proud” or “tough as nails.”

You’re placed into this every man, woman, and child for themselves society and systematically beaten down at every turn, but you’re rugged, proud, and tough through it all. At least you have something—and, with it, you can overcome any challenge and be whoever and whatever you want to be.

That’s the runaway American dream.

Long-time readers recall how I have characterized the so-called retirement crisis in the United States.

If you’re forced to work in retirement, you’re destined to stock shelves in a grocery store.

Not that there’s anything wrong with stocking shelves in a grocery store. But it just comes down to having choice in the matter.

You have a better shot at having choice in the matter, the sooner you acknowledge and embrace the reality that you’ll Never Retire and, subsequently, start planning for it.

However, the retirement establishment offers scant helpful advice—let alone realistic, concrete solutions—to deal with the issue.

The government routinely changes rules around tax-deferred retirement accounts.

Not helpful for large swaths of people who haven’t saved enough.

The financial media and retirement planners default to save more.

Not helpful for people with income, cost of living, and other objective or self-inflicted constraints.

Instead, all of the above look at the person with $50,000, $100,000 or much, much less saved—nowhere near that traditional retirement magic number of $1 million—and imply, or at least suggest, that the individual did something wrong

You’re to blame. You’re deficient. You’re less than. You made a mistake.

Blows my mind how our society tends to take clearly collective problems—not just around retirement and saving money—and frame them as individual failures.

The retirement crisis is nothing more than one clean example to pull from a dirty mess.

Millions of people arrived at middle age or retirement age with nowhere near enough money saved. The response from the retirement industry wasn’t to ask whether the system itself was broken. It was to ask what these individuals did wrong.

Did they start early enough?

Did they buy too much coffee?

The possibility that housing costs exploded, pensions disappeared, healthcare became unaffordable, wages stagnated, and entire generations were forced to navigate a fundamentally different economic reality barely enters the discussion.

The system never gets scrutinized. The individual always does.

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The United States has effectively brainwashed its people—that would be an overstated cliché if it weren’t true.

Between 1999 and 2006 in San Francisco, I learned this quickly while doubling as an urban planning student and an activist fighting against chain stores, for bicycles, and against war.

Historically, the United States has taken what should be an unacceptable baseline—and is an unacceptable baseline in other parts of the world—and led people who crave change to believe they’re fighting the good fight. Activists were simply dangled carrots in the form of here-and-there, once-in-a-while incremental change.

But that baseline has shifted even further as the country recently took what is—in practice—a complete right turn.

Now, in the US, you’re even more conditioned to accept the unacceptable, discover you’re disenchanted with it, and then feel righteous for offering a little bit of resistance.

It’s like eating a salad topped with gasoline, then celebrating when—one day—the powers that be decide they’re going to let you use olive oil.

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Quality of life gets presented to us as Americans similarly.

With a sole focus on GDP, productivity, and the myth of superior convenience and innovation relative to other parts of the world—packaged in what, as it turns out, is just one big inferiority complex—you’re sold a warped idea of what quality of life actually is in practice.

The problem is that quality of life is difficult to measure when you’ve never experienced anything else.

You normalize whatever surrounds you—driving everywhere, sitting in traffic, spending a quarter of your income on a car.

You normalize enormous parking lots and hostility in public (people are just stressed).

Eventually, you stop seeing these things as choices.

They become the reality itself—your reality.

That’s the trick.

The most effective systems don’t merely force compliance. They convince people there is no alternative—and that any alternative goes against their superior way of life.

It’s a mindfuck of the highest order.

That’s why quality of life is such a difficult topic for Americans to discuss.

Most people hear “quality of life” and think it’s some vague lifestyle concept involving beaches, wine, and vacation days.

It’s not.

Quality of life is infrastructure.

It’s geography, transportation, housing, and public space.

It’s how difficult ordinary life feels on an average Tuesday.

Let’s be clear, other parts of the world struggle with some of the same issues. I’m seeing it in Spain where housing sits at the center of many quality-of-life debates. But—as we discussed in reference to gentrification the other day—certain pressures seem inevitable in any capitalist system.

The difference isn’t that Europe somehow solved these problems.

The difference is where the argument starts.

In Spain, people are fighting over housing in cities where large numbers of residents already walk, bike, use public transportation, spend time in public space, and live without needing a car.

In the United States, many people are fighting for those things before they can even begin having the housing conversation.

The baseline is different.

Not perfect. Different.

And that difference matters because quality of life is cumulative. It isn’t one thing. It’s a collection of hundreds of small things that either make ordinary life easier or harder.

There’s a massive difference between having to drive everywhere and deciding whether today is a day to drive, take the train, ride your bike, or walk.

That’s where the quality of life conversations go awry.

Quality of life isn’t beaches or even vacation days.

It’s not some romantic vision of Europe.

It’s whether ordinary life feels unnecessarily difficult.

It’s whether your environment works with you or against you.

It comes down to having options—to having choice. As you can see in real time in Spain, as choices decrease for a meaningful number of people, quality of life decreases for a meaningful number of people. This creates an enormous responsibility for the collective that’s difficult—if not impossible—to fully get your head around.

But, at the baseline with all else equal in a discussion where all else is never equal, the hardest part is that you often don’t realize what’s missing until you’ve experienced something else.

As Americans, we have little to no concept of quality of life until we move—not go on vacation, but live someplace else for long enough. I can tell you this with full confidence after having been through the process over my—almost—51 years on this planet.

For most of us, defining quality of life is like asking a fish to describe water.

We grew up inside the system, so we assume it’s normal.

Only when you step outside it do you realize how many things you always thought were unavoidable were actually all about choices your leaders made for you and choices you never had.

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And I’ve come to a somewhat sad conclusion—it’s inevitable and it’s all relative.

When my daughter was about to be born in 2003, we moved into what was the gentrifying Mission District in San Francisco. We wanted to live there because it made sense logistically and as a neighborhood where you can access most of what you need without a car.

We rented a basement flat in a three-unit building for $1,875 a month.

We didn’t rent—say—a top-floor unit that would have gone for closer to $3,500 at the time.

We rented what was comfortably affordable.

Looking at the numbers today, the apartment we rented 23 years ago now goes for $3,649.

Increíble. The upper flats—based on my analysis—would go for between $4,800 to $6,000 a month.

I have been largely priced out of San Francisco’s Mission District.

Fast forward to 2018 and I moved to East Hollywood in Los Angeles—at the beginning of its still-evolving gentrification process.

Why? Because it was faster and cheaper to find something in my price range: A studio apartment for $1,300 a month. The same in West Hollywood would’ve been closer to work, but would have been more difficult to find and likely closer to $2,000.

Interestingly, that unit hasn’t increased that much in price. It’s now listed at $1,345. In fact, I think, after a rent increase or two, I was paying $1,345.

Whatever—the point is I made a choice based on several factors, including what I felt comfortable paying.

I’m not priced out of East Hollywood yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens someday.

Fast forward to 2025 and Valencia, Spain.

We made our decision to move to Valencia in 2023. Between the time of our decision and the move, rents increased by about 10.5%. Since we secured our long-term rental in February of 2025, they’ve increased a bit more, though it’s difficult to estimate by exactly how much.

We pay €1.500 for a two-bedroom in the heart of the neighborhood. Interestingly, we pay more than we did in Los Angeles where—thanks to strong rent control—our rent was $1,484 a month. Factor in the currency exchange and our rent in Valencia is $1,745.

We’re an odd case—we pay more for housing in Spain than we did in LA. For context—without rent control, market rate for that Los Angeles apartment would likely be around $3,000. An apartment that my wife rented before my time for nothing because it needed work in a central part of relatively tony LA.

She was making strategic choices about how to place herself in the best housing and geographic position possible at the same time as I was. And isn’t that what we all do—if we’re not made of money?

In a minute—a story that leads to the larger point.

But first…

I look back on and look at San Francisco now and it’s comical just how typical it really is when you consider it within the context of gentrification.

After my kid was born—in late 2003—we’d proceed down the hill on 21st Street toward Valencia (one of the main drags in The Mission is called Valencia) every single day. Me pushing the stroller.

One of the first times we did, this local eccentric—this was back when each neighborhood had a homeless person and an eccentric person or two, not as it is now with the city overrun by both. It used to be easy to determine who was who. You knew them by name and would often stop for a chat. Those days are long gone.

Anyway—

This guy—with long crazy hair who busked on the corner with an acoustic guitar—looked at my newborn and said, “Welcome to Earth, kid. Now let the pain begin.”

I just love telling that story, but I guess it pertains to the discussion—at least adjacently.

We’d turn the corner and—starting in May 2005—we became one of the first customers at a café called Ritual Coffee Roasters. It was a small place with friendly employees who liked to say hi to my daughter—and, to some extent, me. Now, Ritual is a staple in San Francisco—and it’s absurdly expensive.

This picture of the menu is from the Hayes Valley location in May 2025—

—I was paying about $3 for a cappuccino in 2005.

Ritual massively expanded that original Mission location. Now it basically looks like a fucking computer lab with tech people typing away. I think khakis and fleece hoodies have become the new dress code, though a few people behind the counter and Gen X guests with tattoos still remain.

Ritual is emblematic—a good symbolic foil—of the gentrification process we see around the world.

I wanted to ensure I wasn’t misremembering or romanticizing the past so I asked Google’s Gemini to check some things for me.

Here’s a summary of what it said:

Ritual Coffee Roasters first opened in May 2005 at 1026 Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Current Locations (4 Total)

After some recent closures (Haight Street closed in April 2025 and the Flora Grubb kiosk also closed), Ritual currently operates four established cafes, with a fifth location in the Financial District reportedly in the works as of early 2026.The Mission (Original): 1026 Valencia Street

Is it part of the gentrification process?

Yes, Ritual is frequently cited as a symbol of gentrification in the Mission.
Because it opened in 2005—just before the tech boom accelerated heavily—it is often viewed as a “pioneer” of the gentrification wave that transformed the neighborhood.

“The Smell of Gentrification”: Local commentary has explicitly described the sensory shift in the Mission from “Mexican food” to “coffee and chai” as a marker of displacement, with Ritual’s arrival on Valencia Street being a key turning point.

Yes, the prices on that board represent the historical standard, but they have experienced a slight bump since then.

Here is exactly how the prices compare to what you would have paid at the original Mission District counter two decades ago:

1. Are the prices higher now?

Yes, but only slightly for standard drinks. Current menu pricing shows that most locations have adjusted upwards by about $0.25 to $0.50 on core milk-and-espresso beverages.

Cappuccino: Costs $6.25 - $6.50 (Up from $6.00 in May 2025)

Latte: Costs $7.25 - $7.50 (Up from $7.00 in May 2025)

2. What were you paying in 2005?

When Ritual first launched in May 2005 on Valencia Street, coffee prices were a stark contrast to today. You would have been paying roughly $2.75 for a cappuccino and $3.25 for a latte.

The deeper story here is that nearly every gentrifying neighborhood follows the same pattern. And you can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it.

But it’s not the people’s job to deal with gentrification.

It’s not the job of the people at risk of being priced out—many of whom turn to activism, and understandably so.

It’s not the job of people making choices about where to live that work for them.

It’s not the job of landlords making rational and reasonable (as in, not skirting the rules to take long-term rentals off of the market) decisions in their own interest.

It’s not the job of commercial enterprises.

We have a place we go to a lot in our neighborhood here that’s creating a local mini-empire in Russafa—sort of like Ritual, but they’re moving beyond coffee. They do a nice job and keep their prices relatively normal, particularly on basic coffee drinks.

It’s the job of government.

But it’s a balancing act between macro-level economic prosperity and countless micro-level situations—some of which act in the aggregate.

Strong rent control is a must. So is housing construction at all price points. Regulation on national chains—especially American ones—is essential. I could go on, but it’s sort of pointless because we’ve been having the same conversation for decades.

Even in Spain—which as been far more progressive than even San Francisco—they’re not doing enough. I don’t want to say they can’t because—as Paris proved with cars—cities can do anything they want to do. It’s just easier to pay lip service, implement easy policy, and turn the other cheek.

At the micro level it all comes back to this—

Nobody moves somewhere thinking: “I’m here to participate in a long-term process of displacement.”

They move because they’re trying to improve their quality of life.

That’s what I was doing in San Francisco and East Hollywood.

That’s what my wife and I were doing when we chose Valencia.

And that’s what most people are doing—across the economic and ethnic spectrum.

We’re all born into situations. They change as we get older. Sometimes we will that change. At other times we have no impact whatsoever. It’s usually a mix of cards being dealt—and how.

Gentrification is less a story about individual people than it is a story about systems that governments either choose to manage or choose to ignore. The government’s job—or at least it should be—is to manage a society made up of all different types of people who have the same rights and many of the same—or, at least, similar—desires and aspirations.

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Reading it now is wild.

Valencia turned out exactly as I imagined.

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time writing about certainty—specifically how much of the relocation industry claims to provide it. The spreadsheets, scouting trips, masterclasses, consultants, and endless checklists all promise some flavor of the same thing: confidence—reassurance or confirmation—that you’re making the right decision as a way to help ease what should be natural anxiety.

But looking back, that’s not what happened here.

My wife and I weren’t certain about every detail, but we had a general picture in our minds of how things would look. We had an idea of where we’d live and what daily life would feel like, but less of an idea around who we'd meet or what challenges would come with the move.

You see the distinction we’ve been discussing emerge right there: Some of what you’re doing is making well-considered, educated guesses. Some is just what life always looks like, regardless of changing places.

What we were 100% certain about was the kind of life we wanted—and how Valencia could provide it 24/7 in ways the United States simply isn’t capable of delivering on.

That turned out to be enough.

The article below didn’t predict the future as much as it proves that the real work happened before the move. Before visas, paperwork, apartment searches, and all the other logistical details people obsess over.

We already knew what we were looking for—and why.

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In less than 8 months, my wife and I are moving to Valencia, Spain.

As I said the other day, it’s going to be great to live in country where I’m more than happy to pay taxes. It’s also going to be something else to finally live in a place that provides the type of urban living I have dreamed of since first setting foot in San Francisco in 1999.

People sometimes say that San Francisco is the closest thing we have in the United States to a European city. And, while this might be true, don’t let the comparison fool you into thinking that San Francisco is anything like a European city.

I lived in San Francisco from 1999 to 2006. I fell in love with cities and studied urban planning intensely there. I used to walk around somewhat sanctimoniously, acting as if San Francisco was an urban gem.

Don’t get me wrong. I love San Francisco. It is great.

I go back frequently to visit my daughter. And we’re looking forward to spending a week or so there in June to cat sit for my kid. She lives in what might be the best urban neighborhood in America.

But—after finally having made it to Europe in 2022—that’s all you can say about solid examples of urbanism in the US.

They’re the best in America.

They don’t hold up—at all—to even above average examples of great city building and planning in, at least, the Europe I have seen (al menos en la Europa que he visto).

This isn’t as much a criticism as it is reality without rationalizing.

Many people in American urban planning tend to overstate the greatness of our cities. They know Europe is better. They wish the US was more like Europe from an urban perspective. So they fool themselves with these comparisons.

That was me throughout my eight years studying urban planning in San Francisco and Southern California. I so badly wanted San Francisco to be one of these places my professors spoke so highly of. As the best examples of urban living the world has to offer.

San Francisco is a lot like Lisbon or Barcelona.

San Francisco, as much as I love it, isn’t a pimple on Barcelona’s ass (un grano en el culo de Barcelona). And I’m confident I’ll say the same in relation to Lisbon within minutes of setting foot in that city, hopefully in the next year or two after the aforementioned move.

As far our future home Valencia goes—

Valencia is the green capital of Europe and, based on what I know now and the confidence I have in what I know, the perfect place to Never Retire, if you love city living.

We can’t have nice things like Valencia or Barcelona in America.

And it’s mainly because (here’s the roughest and quickest sketch of what you learn when you major in urban planning)—

• In the 1950s, the United States decided to build freeways and dismantle public transportation. This, along with other wartime and post-war initiatives, paved the way for suburbia and increasing DISinvestment in cities that persists to this day.

• Americans—thanks largely to this political and social conditioning—don’t like cities.

• We have a car culture that—even in places like San Francisco—won’t budge. At least not by enough to matter.

• Our national attitude is pretty much anti-urban.

That’s the clean version.

Even people who live in cities—and there are more than a few who contribute to the high cost to live in many of them—hate them. They’re—often uninformed—self-hating city dwellers. Or people who own a business in the city and live elsewhere.

I could go on all day with examples, but here are just a few. From San Francisco.

There was a horrific accident that took the lives of an entire family in San Francisco several weeks ago at a corner by West Portal Station. I spent a lot of time in that neighborhood doing research while in college. It’s like a cute little Main Street town within the city.

In response to the accident, The City wants to make some pedestrian safety improvements, which would result in the loss of some parking places. There are people in the neighborhood who oppose it.

After a center bike lane was installed on Valencia Street (no relation) in the Mission District, business owners started blaming it for their problems. One restaurant owner even—apparently—went on a hunger strike.

These people haven’t read the research on removing parking and improving pedestrianism. And even if they did, they wouldn’t listen because they know what they know and they know what they know.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle published a comical article the other day saying that car owners in the city “feel under siege.” So much change, particularly “Protected bike lanes … Less parking … Streets that favor pedestrians … Bans on right turns at many red lights” makes car ownership in the city “miserable.”

Um. That’s kind of the point.

But try driving in cities—large and not-so-large—in, say, France, where low-emission zones and other restrictions have become a thing. Similar policies aimed at curbing the car have been or are in the works across Europe, including in Spain. And these are places at the forefront. They don’t have strong and oppressive car cultures. Yet, they’re still making incredibly impressive, groundbreaking and smart urban planning decisions.

Anyhow, the “best” parts of the article noted that all of these changes are “scaring seniors into staying home” and focused on drivers who essentially feel discriminated against.

Mind-blowing really.

These people must not be familiar with the endless amount of research on how car dependency and car culture isolates the elderly. But, of course, take one example of one person in San Francisco and make that a thing.

Our cites are effectively built for the car. Everybody and everything else has to fight for space. You need eyes, not research for this.

Even in San Francisco.

Anyhow, Valencia isn’t without its challenges (its government recently took a shift towards the right), but it was just crowned the green capital of Europe. And the incredible thing is—Valencia could stop what it’s doing now—and still be head and shoulders above any American city from the perspective of any sane city lover. Even if it didn’t do the things that helped it earn this honor, it would Trump our brand of Cracker Jack box urbanism.

Everything in italics is from a CNN article—

• The European Commission cited Valencia’s 5 million square meters of green space. According to the Commission’s Report, 97% of residents live less than 300 meters from a major green area.

• After a deadly flood in 1957, the river was redirected and the Turia was slated to become a multi-lane highway. Public opposition thwarted the development, however, giving rise to a movement that demanded more green space in the city center.

To be fair, New York City also beat back a freeway that would have cut through Greenwich Village around the same time. After the 1989 earthquake, San Francisco did not rebuild the freeway that paralleled its now beautiful and vibrant waterfront.

• The Turia also functions as a sustainable transportation highway. Designated paths run along the length of the park making it ideal for commuters on bicycles and electric scooters to cut through the city and avoid street traffic.

• A love of cycling is what led Giuseppe Grezzi, an Italian transplant to Valencia, to get involved in local politics, eventually becoming the city’s councillor of sustainable mobility for eight years. His proudest achievement: increasing bike lanes in the city by more than 50%.

• During his term, the city poured money into sustainable transport, expanding a new metro line, installing public bicycles and augmenting nearly 200 kilometers (120 miles) of bike paths that link to several “green routes” out of the city.

• During the pandemic, Valencia took the initiative to convert several high-traffic areas into pedestrian-only zones, including the city’s central roundabout, where Valencia’s City Hall, the Ayuntamiento, sits in an impressive 18th-century building.

Given the sense my wife and I have for places—and knowing how we feel about them quite quickly—we think Valencia will speak to us once we live there the way it does now, based on our time there and some secondhand accounts.

We think it will be the perfect place to explore the rest of Spain, all of Europe and the world from. And the ideal place to Never Retire.

The lifestyle—close to the beach, great weather, great parks, no need for a car, ample public space, tons of bars and restaurants—is what we are only able to half ass in Los Angeles.

Sad, but true.

Life in great American cities only goes—frustratingly—a small part of the way to having a true, day-in, day-out, it’s your freaking life urban experience.

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We looked at it extensively when I studied urban planning and design between 2002 and 2008.

I hadn’t thought about the city for a while. Then, I saw a video about it on YouTube.

It was by VUELTAMUN, a channel by two Argentinians, who used to keep Valencia as their home base, but now travel the world as digital nomads. They’re good—so I embedded their video at the end of today’s newsletter story.

Seeing Curitiba again reminded me how much of what we consider "new" today was being done decades ago in Brazil—one of the last places that would come to mind for most people, especially Americans.

Most people have probably never even heard of Curitiba. Yet urban planners have been studying it for decades because it pioneered the modern urban planning movement—focused on pedestrianism and green space—that’s all over the news today.

Curitiba was ahead of its time.

For example, Curitiba focused on bus rapid transit (BRT) while American cities were doubling down on highways. This has less to do with transportation planning and more to do with political will and culture.

Simply put, BRT is just dedicated bus lanes, usually protected in a way so cars can’t access the lane and mess up the flow. You’ll see them piecemeal in some U.S. cities, such as San Francisco. For example, San Francisco uses BRT along a 2-mile stretch of busy Van Ness Avenue.

It’s set up just like a subway line, but it’s above ground. It makes sense given the cost, timelines, and logistics to build underground transportation. In fact, it might make more sense for quite a few cities than a traditional “metro” system. However, a big reason why you saw and still see subway projects is because BRT usually means you’ll have to take space away from the automobile. And, of course, subway trains do tend to move faster than BRT, even if it has a strong dedicated lane.

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Bigger picture: Plenty of cities around the world solved problems Americans assume are unsolvable due to an ignorance that led to the current toxic sociopolitical culture.

From the moment you enter the world in the United States, you're taught—almost brainwashed into believing—that innovation flows outward from America and rarely inward.

In reality, the U.S. ignores lessons from everywhere.

Growing up in the U.S., we're conditioned to think—explicitly and implicitly—that everywhere else is some combination of poorer, less capable, less innovative, less safe, less convenient, and less desirable.

Then you experience life in Europe or catch a glimpse of it from people doing likewise in countries from Brazil to China and you realize that while there might be kernels of truth in what you learned, they didn’t tell you the whole story.

Not even close.

It’s not that most every other country doesn’t have its problems, but as an American you naturally think that all of Brazil consists of favelas, that China is a land of only oppression, and that the entirety of Spain is a bureaucratic mess where everybody makes minimum wage. This thinking extends to pretty much every other place in the world that large swaths of Americans—dare I say, the majority—reflexively consider poor, dirty, unsafe, and inferior.

The reality is this: You can’t measure quality of life by gross domestic product (GDP). Some countries don’t have the economic firepower—for one reason or another—to compete.

Some could, but don’t necessarily make competition around that number the priority.

Others realize their limitations and organize around a recognition of their people.

Often, it’s a mix of both.

The most shocking—and really sort of disheartening—thing you realize once you escape the grip of American indoctrination is that other countries aren't sitting around waiting for instructions from “us.”

For much of my life, I assumed—without ever consciously thinking about it—that the U.S. was the center of gravity. Solely because it was—other than Canada—my only reference point.

The United States was the place that innovated and led, and that everybody else watched and ultimately wanted to resemble.

Then you spend enough time outside the United States and realize how arrogant—and frankly inaccurate—that assumption is.

Not only are other countries not trying to become America, many of them have spent decades intentionally avoiding the mistakes America made.

One of the strangest—and, really, pathetic—things about traveling abroad is seeing American brands everywhere. McDonald’s. Starbucks. KFC. It makes it feel as if the entire world is slowly becoming a giant American suburb.

As much as I’d love to see Europe detach itself from American brands, it’s mostly superficial.

Random people might drink Starbucks in Europe, yet they’re often doing so in cities with better public transportation, more public space, less car dependency, and a fundamentally different understanding of how daily life should work.

That’s where Americans get confused.

They see a McDonald’s and assume the world must really give a shit.

In reality, we’re often looking at a society that borrowed a few consumer products while rejecting much of the worldview that produced them.

That’s true at the local level, where cities like Curitiba prioritized public transportation while U.S. governments continued to nurture car dependency as if it were a right, while paying lip service and—in some cases—reacting with outright hostility to alternatives.

It’s true at the national level, where countries across Europe continued investing in public space, public transportation, and dense urban development while the U.S. doubled down on suburban expansion.

Many Europeans absolutely do aspire to certain versions of America—fashion, entertainment, consumer culture, whatever. That's always struck me as mind-boggling.

Give them a dose of the American version of quality of life and they might join their European counterparts who reject the United States on principle and in day-to-day action.

All of this is becoming increasingly clear at the geopolitical level.

One of the most interesting developments of the last few years is watching Europe slowly realize it cannot assume American leadership will always exist in the form it once did.

Whether that’s finance, defense, energy, technology, or trade, Europe increasingly appears to be organizing around a simple realization:

It needs to be capable of standing on its own. And it is, particularly as it strengthens its relationships with Mexico, Canada, China, and others.

Europeans are building new financial infrastructure, coordinating industrial policy, cutting meaningful trade deals that don’t involve the U.S., and asking questions about long-term strategic independence that Americans barely notice.

It’s a classic case of be careful what you wish. American isolationism is backfiring right before our eyes as Europe and much of the rest of the world wakes up and starts working together at the macro level at the same time as the indoctrination loses its grip at cracks in the micro level.

The irony is that many Americans still imagine Europe as dependent, stagnant, and somehow perpetually behind.

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None of this means Europe is perfect.

It means the world is changing while many Americans are still operating from assumptions that stopped being true years ago.

None of this became unmistakably obvious until I moved.

Because once you live somewhere else, the mythology falls apart.

You stop evaluating entire countries through stereotypes, imagining that GDP explains everything, and assuming every place is either trying to become America or failing because it hasn’t.

That’s the lie.

Not only that other countries are bad or inferior. But that they’re secondary to a central theme determined, dictated, and owned by the United States. That everyone else is somehow little more than supporting characters in an American story.

Then you leave and discover they’re living their own stories.

Most of them couldn’t care less what the United States is doing.

Which is exactly why they're often doing so many things better.

Add both to the list of ideas people repeat so often—in imperfect harmony—that we uncritically accept them as fact.

As I’ve argued previously, people who subscribe to the honeymoon period mindset sometimes set themselves up to fail.

If you go into a move anticipating a honeymoon period there might be a misalignment of expectations. It’s one thing if it’s explicitly stated that you’re setting off on an adventure. It’s entirely another if you’re scheduling that “adventure” for the rest of your life.

In that case, it’s no surprise that you end up falling off the euphoric cliff they've already convinced themselves is waiting. And it’s no wonder that you find discontent in phase two and beyond.

I guess it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Likewise with running away from something. People love to trot out the old tired line: Are you running away from something or are you running toward something?

I could smoke an entire bag of weed and kill fewer brain cells than when I sit through “content” that discusses the honeymoon period and running away versus toward.

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We tend to seek relief from discomfort.

Sometimes that makes sense.

It’s hot outside, so you jump in a body of water.

You've got a headache, so you take an aspirin.

All fine and good until you start looking for relief from something more profound than an acute problem.

You feel anxious, so you have a drink or smoke some weed.

Now, we’re on a slippery slope. Works fine for some people, but it’s not necessarily a way to address something bigger than momentary unease.

That said, relief can be rational. Like the drink or the smoke, it’s all about a recognition of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you view it going forward.

Part of the reason for our move to Spain was relief-seeking from:

• American geography

• driving

• inconvenience

• hostility

• cost

• quality-of-life tradeoffs

All real problems. We would be idiots to not seek some form of relief from them. I can’t count the number of people in Los Angeles who go hiking simply to escape—to seek relief—from car culture. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Obviously.

Bars exist—in part—as places of refuge, especially in the United States.

So many people are burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail. They’re poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail. They feel hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.

So we’re always seeking shelter from the storm.

Damn, I’ve turned into quite the poetic writer.

Anyway—the mistake is the inability or refusal to recognize temporary relief for what it is, and understand that it’s not the means to a certain and sustainable end.

Relief removes pressure.

So, you move someplace as a relief-seeking response. You might not be fully—or at all—aware of your deep-seated intent. Things don’t feel right wherever you are, so you take extreme action and pick up and move.

But no matter where you go you can’t remove the trappings of day-to-day life.

You can replace a car with walking, biking, and public transit, but your new setting will only carry your desire to get up in the morning and go out so far.

Life happens. And it can get you down.

As I’ve written, I lost my biggest freelance client at the end of 2025. Around that time, I made the decision to reinvent my work inside of my existing career. The only difference between losing work and shifting its focus in Los Angeles and Spain is that the opportunity presents itself differently here.

The key is not blaming the place for life happening—so many people do, and it irks me—alongside realizing and seizing the opportunity.

There are so many upsides to me studying, thinking and writing about what’s happening in Europe and—in some cases—relating it to the U.S. There are new story arcs to create and pitch and logistical upsides. So I went for it—and it’s happening. At the end of today’s post, you’ll find links to my latest stories for Global Finance Magazine.

But it comes back to having the same type of personality that I’ve had for a while.

No matter where you are, you don’t merely make it work—you eagerly make it work in a way that keeps you excited and smiling (for the most part). Spain certainly aids in that process, but there’s no place that can harvest those ingredients from inside you.

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When you make a move like we did, there’s this blob across the ocean that’s always looming.

The United States becomes this thing strangely situated across the Atlantic.

You know you sure as hell don’t want to go back.

Yet sometimes when life gets difficult you find yourself reaching mentally toward it, simply because it was familiar.

It represents relief. Just like Spain can be relief when you’re grinding it out in the United States.

After a move, people mistake this for homesickness all the time. Or the honeymoon period wearing off.

It’s more like comfort seeking and craving a world with a level of built-in familiarity that automatically can make you feel more confident.

This is where Never Retire sneaks back in.

Once relief fades, you’re left with the same question everybody faces:

What am I doing with my life?

Ideally, you ask that question before making a big move—not after you used moving as a soothing mechanism.

Amid a Never Retire mindset, you’re always looking to maintain ways to engage your body and mind as you cross into the second act of life. That’s a big reason why we moved—to avoid stagnation before it had the chance to set in. Across the world—and most definitely in the United States—that's a chronic problem, not an acute one.

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From Global Finance Magazine:

4 Reasons JPMorgan Should Buy Revolut

Spain’s Economic Growth Test

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Fantastic. If spreadsheets and scouting trips are bullshit, then what do you actually do?

How do you decide where to live? Whether you’re switching neighborhoods or countries.

The annoying answer is that there isn’t a formula.

The more useful answer is that there are better questions.

So let’s create a checklist of sorts that’s not your standard checklist. It includes observations and inspections I’ve made of myself over the years and of others through formal research while studying urban planning and while watching Americans navigate American and European cities.

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However, the more I reread it, the more I concluded that I need to be comfortable with that. Because I refuse to sell certainty to make an inherently uncertain situation neat and tidy.

My hope for this newsletter is that it helps you think through the messiness of where you live—or might want to live—and why. I’m not here to inspire, dazzle you with romanticization, or bombard you with problems I position myself to help you solve.

I don’t sell masterclasses or offer one-on-one consultations. I think most of that is opportunistic noise for people looking in the wrong place for clarity.

There’s a ridiculous irony in using a car analogy to make this point, but here we are.

A lot of people do a better job deciding what type of car to buy than deciding where to live.

When people buy a car, they tend to ask practical questions.

How am I actually going to use this thing?

Do I commute? Need cargo space? Kids? City driving and parking? Long highway trips? Bad weather? Fuel economy? Maintenance?

When somebody considers a crazy sports car purchase, one of three things happens:

• They buy the car and—often—look like an idiot.

• They wait, make a rational purchase, then—if their financial situation supports it—buy the sports car. (And maybe still look like an idiot).

• They don’t buy the car—coming to their senses to realize that, based on the utilitarian nature of a motor vehicle—there’s no need for a turbo-charged Porsche.

But when people think about where to live—especially when moving abroad—that kind of clarity often disappears.

Suddenly the decision-making process becomes emotional, performative as they attempt to mimic what they’ve seen online, and often deeply unserious.

It becomes a discussion around whether the locals will accept you, how quickly you can open a bank account, and how much you’ll pay in taxes. So loads of people go into their scouting trips and relocation masterclasses focused precisely on the wrong things.

None—or not much—of what they’re doing gets to the real question.

What kind of ordinary life are you actually trying to build?

I probably see this differently than most people.

Not because I’m uniquely brilliant—though that helps!

But because I’ve spent the last 26 years thinking about cities.

I fell in love with urban life first.

Then I studied urban planning.

Then I spent decades paying attention—not just to architecture or aesthetics, but to how cities actually function. And how I feel and function inside of them.

Neighborhoods are less about density as a concept and more about exactly what’s within reach. They’re less about an abundance of bike lanes or public transit and more about where I need to go and how I’d like to get there. And taxes—as hard as they can be to pay—are less an expense and more the cost of admission for an actually high quality of life. Not a learned myth or a marketing slogan, but a reality you can touch.

The mechanics of day-to-day life that dictate whether daily life feels fluid or exhausting.

That background is a huge part of what brought me to Spain.

And it’s a big reason I can usually tell the difference between a place I enjoy visiting and a place I could actually live.

Valencia is probably the best concrete example of this.

We visited one time—briefly.

It rained a lot. It was windy.

We weren’t blown away—no pun.

There was zero pomp and circumstance. No cinematic “we have to live here” aperture. No can you believe people get to live like this everyday idealized moment.

We left, thought about Valencia, and reassessed it.

We compared what we knew about ourselves to what we understood about the city and what had been developing there.

Then decided to move.

And after making that decision?

We didn’t come back before actually relocating. On a subsequent trip to Europe before moving, Valencia wasn’t even on the itinerary—even though we knew we would be moving there. There just wasn’t any need to see the city again—as if she was a long-distance lover.

Which sounds insane if your framework is scouting trips, YouTube walkthroughs, and “expat” forum obsessing.

But perfectly logical if your framework is different.

This is where people start to get frustrated.

Fair enough.

Because what most people want here is a clean framework. A process or checklist—something they can optimize.

That’s understandable.

If your life feels unsettled—politically, emotionally, professionally, existentially—it’s comforting to believe the answer is procedural.

Compare visas, build a spreadsheet, and take a scouting trip. Watch 37 YouTube videos from smiling people who moved to Portugal six months ago. Buy somebody’s relocation course.

It’s all about turning uncertainty into process.

Because process feels like control.

But often, it’s just avoidance.

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I'm tempted to say it's the end of the United States empire, but that's too simple.

Rather, the rest of the world is taking power and the narrative away from the US. For the first time in a long time, more people are leaving the United States than moving to it.

For decades, America sold itself as the obvious destination—the default place ambitious people moved toward, not away from.

That assumption feels shakier than it has in a very long time.

Not because the United States is collapsing, but because other countries are building systems, infrastructure, and quality of life that make the old story harder to defend.

When productive, ambitious, globally mobile people leave with little to no intention of returning, the like-minded who remain face a dichotomy: leave too—or stay and figure out how to build a tolerable, meaningful life where they are.

I like to think that if you read this newsletter, you’re one of the people still capable of thinking clearly about all of this. Or you live outside of the United States and care about these matters for one reason or another.

So let’s proceed in two parts:

• One—just so you know it’s not hyperbole, let’s talk about a couple of very specific things that barely register in American media coverage that illustrate this writing on the wall.

• Two—let’s consider the question: How to actually decide where to live?

Let’s surface scratch a couple of huge stories you’re probably not hearing about in the United States.

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First, there’s something in Spain called Bizum. It’s a peer-to-peer payment platform—similar to Venmo or Zelle—that a vast majority of the Spanish population uses. If you want to split the bill, you “Bizum” your friend. Some businesses have been informally accepting Bizum for some time. All you need is the other person’s phone number and a bank account.

But, starting this week, Bizum is officially rolling out in retail stores across the country. So you can simply tap to pay using Bizum just as you might with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or your bank-issued Visa or Mastercard.

But the difference is, when you pay directly with Bizum, you cut out the expensive American card networks. The money moves instantly from your account to the merchant's bank account through a domestic rails system, drastically undercutting the fees American card networks force merchants to pay.

Bizum in Spain is effectively a test case for an eventual EU-wide rollout.

Bizum, MB WAY (Portugal), and Bancomat (Italy) formed a consortium called EuroPA to make their systems cross-compatible. Other local apps, like Blik (Poland), IRIS (Greece), and Vipps MobilePay (Nordics), have also signed on.

The goal is to enable over 100 million European citizens to seamlessly send money or buy goods across borders using their native local apps, without needing an intermediary card processor.

This doesn’t bode well for the American incumbents.

Second, Brazilian fintech Nubank and Europe’s Revolut and bunq have 223 million users combined. Only about one million are in the US—most of them belong to Revolut. All three neobanks are in the process of bringing their financial super apps to the US.

Banking, investing, transfers, payments, currency exchange—all in one place. We're talking a comprehensive one stop shop that no American bank or fintech offers.

All three of these companies are aggressive, successful, sharp, and fully prepared to compete on American turf.

That should make American incumbents nervous.

I could go on all day about just these two examples. But, in the bigger picture, we’re seeing the world eschew American hegemony while increasingly challenging US companies on their own turf and abroad.

So if someone says America’s grip on the global narrative is slipping or that the rest of the world is no longer content to operate inside an American-defined story, they’re not blowing smoke up your ass. They're making a logical inference from what they see happening around the world. Developments that rarely break through America’s relentlessly domestic political noise.

America isn’t necessarily collapsing. But the assumptions Americans rely on absolutely are.

If the assumptions you grew up with no longer hold, then the question becomes personal.

If you could live differently, where would you?

That’s the question we’ll tackle in the next installment: how to actually decide where to live.

It’ll be a paid installment—so if this conversation resonates, subscribe below.

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That kind of day-to-day life doesn’t happen by accident.

It’s not a fluke.

It’s the product of choices.

Political choices. Urban planning choices. Cultural choices. Choices about who gets prioritized and what cities are actually for.

To best illustrate and understand this, it helps to compare what many Americans expect city life to feel like with what city life can actually feel like. Because Americans have been conditioned—over decades—to associate cities with a very specific set of problems.

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I grew up wondering why most of my family had never been to New York City, even though we lived Upstate. Or wondering who these people were who lived in Toronto or even the cool parts of Buffalo on the rare trips we’d make there from my hometown of Niagara Falls.

The city was a place to visit if you wanted to see a show or a sporting event—or if somebody you knew decided to have their wedding reception in Downtown Buffalo.

Nobody in my family ever entertained the idea of living in a city—nor did they have much to say about the people who lived there. Cities were one big mystery to avoid at pretty much all costs.

This wasn’t unique to my family. It’s how a lot of Americans think about cities, whether they realize it or not.

Cities are dirty, dangerous, and stressful. Full of traffic, homeless people, noise, dysfunction, and hard tradeoffs. Maybe fun to visit for a game, a concert, a nice dinner, or a long weekend in the comfy confines of the Skydome Hotel.

But actually live there? Raise a family there? Build a life there? That was a very different conversation that never happened—until I moved to San Francisco in 1999.

To be fair, a lot of American cities have done a fantastic job earning that reputation. It’s difficult to convince someone who sees very real problems sensationalized repeatedly on Fox News that many urban neighborhoods in large and medium size US cities thrive. Not in the same way European cities do, but close enough for this part of the discussion.

Regardless of what you see in cities now or have been told about them, they’re not inherently broken places. They’ve struggled because the United States spent decades disinvesting in urban life while subsidizing escape from it. In fact, it’s really pretty incredible how cities have thrived—how they manage to keep capitalism running in the US—given what they’re up against.

Everyone seems to want cities to fail. And if they don’t say it openly, they have an odd way of showing their support through actions that favor bad city planning and suburban investment.

Cities—and the vibrant urban neighborhoods that somehow cut through in otherwise dead cities—are resilient places.

Buffalo is a simple example.

The Bills play in Orchard Park.

The main University at Buffalo campus is in Amherst.

Think about what that means.

Two major institutions that could help anchor energy, tax base, housing demand, businesses, and day-to-day life in the city instead reinforce the pull outward. They could have been built in the city, but the suburbs effectively won the contract.

This is how a lot of American metros evolved.

You hollow out the center. Spread everything across the suburbs. Design daily life around private automobiles. Then act surprised when urban life feels compromised, inconvenient, or chaotic. When all you have is one “cool” neighborhood—in Buffalo, that’s Elmwood Village—where people live, often making the decision to put down roots and raise kids.

When this becomes the norm, this is how you’ve become conditioned to think about cities.

After enough time, what’s really pure and unadulterated dysfunction stops looking like dysfunction.

It just starts looking normal.

That’s where Paris becomes such an interesting case study.

Because if American assumptions about cities were true, Paris should be exhausting.

Instead, millions of Americans flock there every year and treat it like an amusement park.

And I don’t even necessarily mean that as an insult.

We saw it constantly during the first half of April.

Guided cheese tours. Groups marveling at things that should be completely unremarkable in any civilized society.

The ability to walk out of your apartment, stroll down a vibrant neighborhood street, drink a coffee, eat a quality baked good, sit outside, watch life happen around you—all without getting in your car, pulling into a parking lot, or participating in some soulless and exhausting suburban ritual Americans have been taught to accept as normal.

That’s the thing.

Most Americans don’t look at Paris and think: Why don’t we live like this?

They look at Paris and think, wow, what a fun place to visit.

Like it exists in some alternate reality.

Another dimension only reachable by airplane for the exact duration of your approved vacation.

Then it’s back to “normal” life.

Back to parking lots, drive-throughs, and treating basic urban functionality as novelty.

And that’s exactly why places like Valencia keep ending up on “best places to live” lists.

The conversation isn’t really about whether you’re less likely to get mugged, stabbed, or shot. It’s not about whether the government remembered or even cares enough anymore to clean the streets.

Those are baseline expectations in a functioning society.

The distinctions happen elsewhere.

Valencia is by the sea.

It has Turia Park.

It’s easier.

Paris has more intensity, more density, more grandeur.

That’s the actual comparison.

You make that comparison and decide what suits you best—not whether you’re willing to tolerate gross dysfunction in exchange for access to urban life.

That’s the difference.

The comparison isn’t gross dysfunction versus slightly less gross dysfunction.

It’s between functioning systems making different tradeoffs.

European cities and American cities often aren’t even competing on the same playing field.

Once you understand that, you start asking much better questions about where—and how—you actually want to live.

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It was like watching podcast bros play the victim.

You live in a world that—historically—you have dominated hysterically and hegemonically. Then, when the rest of the population comes to finally put you in your place with actions rather than words, you act as if you’re the target of oppression.

It’s laughable. And really kind of gross.

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Seeing the reaction of everyday drivers to parking enforcement and access restrictions and the gripes from taxi drivers is nothing short of pathetic. They act as if somehow they have the right to the road simply because… that’s how it’s always been.

Suddenly, with their dominance finally challenged through official government action, they’re asking for moderation in the conversation.

What fucking nerve.

This is actually one area of discourse in the world that doesn’t require moderation. Because these cries for moderation—for taking a step back and reassessing the implementation of pedestrianization programs—are little more than disingenuous tactics to halt long overdue progress.

These reactions dominate the “discussion” in the United States. But Paris isn’t immune. The folks interviewed in the Paris TV segment trot out the same tired thought-free lines to make arguments that have one and only one goal—to preserve the status quo.

Of all the things they say the one I love most is that somehow street improvements focused on bikes and pedestrians will slow deliveries or emergency vehicles.

This couldn’t be any more absurd.

There must not be a lot going on in a brain that intuitively comes to the conclusion that removing most automobiles from a street and replacing them with people and bikes will increase congestion and slow emergency response times.

Any logical mind realizes—obviously—that it’s far more difficult to get around bottlenecked auto traffic than it is humans or humans on bicycles. That this even needs to be pointed out shows how disingenuous that argument is in the first place. It’s like saying it’s harder to go through a door when it’s closed than when it’s open.

Forget intuition. It often does us wrong.

The research—from London to Ireland, from Cedar Rapids to Toronto, from New Jersey to Oslo—shows that everything from “road diets” to “Low Traffic Neighborhood restrictions” to Barcelona’s Superblocks to the world's most aggressive street-redesign programs in Paris have improved response times.

Many of the studies that provide this data tested “perception versus reality.” That the opposite of what should be the obvious finding somehow became perception really does reflect a handful of hamsters and one wheel living rent-free in brains around the world with their hub in the United States of America.

In Paris, vehicles that need access have access.

In fact, in areas where cars have been banished, taxis, delivery drivers, and emergency vehicles now have the space to themselves.

It’s pretty incredible.

They might have to wait a few seconds to maybe a minute to get around bikes and people; not valuable minutes or more when they literally can’t move due to congestion. And, in my experience, cyclists and pedestrians are far faster, more likely, and open to getting out of the way than a person in their two-ton cocoon.

There’s no serious argument against what they’ve done in Paris that holds water.

Pollution has been cut by more than half in the city. The terraces, cafés, and restaurants are full throughout the city, but with a calm few places manage because they haven’t been as bold as Paris.

Thanks, by the way, to a Spaniard!

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What's happening in Paris and—to a lesser, but still encouraging extent—around the world is long overdue.

Automobiles—particularly private motor vehicles—have dominated for far too long. Watching their drivers play the victim—watching them react emotionally by saying the opposite of what's true, right out of an all-too-familiar playbook, is a special kind of satisfying.

Because what they’re actually losing isn’t freedom.

It’s dominance.

There’s a difference.

Nobody is stopping people from getting around Paris.

The city is simply refusing to organize itself around the convenience of private drivers at the expense of everybody else.

That’s what this debate is really about—not bikes, not deliveries, not emergency vehicles.

Power.

Who gets the space. Who gets prioritized. Your answers to those questions ultimately determine what type of city you want to live in.

So... in your view, how long would a person need to "scout" an area to realistically know if they'd like to relocate there?

The question contains a significant part of the answer. Because “how long” is the wrong way to look at it.

In my reply, I said:

My point is that before you even think about "scouting" anything you need to have a better idea of what you want and need from a place, which requires (1) an understanding of yourself and (2) an understanding of how places function. Most people skip those two points and think walking around like a focused tourist will give them real answers.

Whether you do it for two days or two months, visiting a location that’s “on your list” misses the really important considerations people should be taking into account about life abroad.

I fully understand that this might seem like nitpicking. But the problem is that most discussions about moving abroad stay on the surface. In isolation, there’s nothing wrong with cost-of-living estimates, concerns over currency exchange, or even taking a “scouting trip.” It’s just that—taken together—all of these things keep the conversation painfully basic.

The relocation industry likes this because they want to make things simple:

You have a dream. They sell a service. All you have to do is sample your favorite places and make a decision. They’ll charge you to take care of the rest.

The only friction they want to introduce into the process is basic logistical-type friction. The stuff with easy yes and no or step-by-step answers.

The friction that matters isn’t paperwork, visas, residency, healthcare registration, or opening a bank account.

That stuff can be annoying, but it’s ultimately solvable. And—in my experience—much easier to “solve” than the relocation opportunists will have you believe. Here again—they introduce problems that they make you think you need help solving.

Their business model lives and dies on starting off on the wrong foot—it’s sort of pathetic.

The real friction is existential.

What kind of life do you actually want?

How do you want ordinary Tuesday mornings to feel?

Place clearly holds answers to these and related questions, but not until you grapple with #1 and #2 above. This is the type of stuff that’s not even related to moving abroad. It’s the work we do as we grow as adults—self-awareness meets a deep understanding of the type of physical and social environments we prefer and why.

Things no cart-before-the-horse scouting trip can deal with for you. And, because many people have never dealt with this stuff—fully or at all—they go through the internet-supplied motions as glorified tourists on what might be a slightly extended vacation. In fact, they use the dream of moving abroad to self-medicate instead of doing the work.

There’s little risk other than this far-off day that you can’t quite imagine when you might actually get on an airplane and move to a foreign country.

The idea of a scouting trip reminds me of what the author Barbara Ehrenreich did for her book, Nickel and Dimed.

As the book description notes:

Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels.

Fantastic—for what it is. But a big criticism of her work is that it was positioned as a way to see how it is to be a low-wage worker. That’s a bit difficult to do when you’re not a low-wage worker; you’re merely playing the role of somebody who is one.

Here again—no risk.

Just like on a scouting trip, you’re not someone who has actually made the move abroad.

So where’s the real, meaningful, deep-below-the-surface utility? It really doesn’t exist—at least not the way people who attach so much importance to a scouting trip like to riff.

In fact, I’d argue the opposite.

Someone with a strong sense of who they are and what they want—combined with a real understanding of how places function—probably has a better chance of successfully moving somewhere sight unseen than someone who spends 60 days “scouting” five cities armed with spreadsheets, saved YouTube videos, relocation webinars, masterclasses, and a notebook full of restaurant recommendations.

The latter mess just clouds the landscape of the things you should be thinking about.

Because the key variable isn’t exposure.

It’s interpretation.

Most people don’t know what they’re actually looking at. They think they’re evaluating a place. What they’re often evaluating is how it feels to be temporarily free from their normal life.

That’s not the same thing.

Paris is a perfect example.

From a tourist—or scouting trip—perspective, Paris should have ruined Valencia for me.

It’s bigger, denser, and more dramatic. Its bike infrastructure makes even progressive cities like Valencia look timid. The city has aggressively reclaimed space from cars in a way that feels almost unimaginable in most of the United States and even across Spain.

And yet—

I never once considered moving there.

Not seriously.

Because I know who I am.

I know how I like my days to feel.

I know what friction I’m willing to tolerate and what kind I’m not.

And that type of knowledge is infinitely more useful than another week walking around neighborhoods pretending you live there.

I didn’t go to Paris to figure this out.

We actually moved to Valencia a few years after having only spent a few days there and not really falling in love with it at the time. We just ended up knowing, based on points #1 and #2, that it—particularly our neighborhood—made sense, that it would be the best fit.

That doesn’t mean we were guaranteed success.

Nothing is.

But that’s exactly the point.

Moving abroad isn’t a consumer purchase you de-risk with enough comparison shopping.

It’s a life decision.

And life decisions don’t become clearer because you ate at the right restaurants, toured enough neighborhoods, or took somebody’s relocation masterclass.

They become clearer when you understand yourself well enough to recognize the type of place that fits—and when you understand cities well enough to tell the difference between temporary excitement and sustainable daily life.

That’s the utility.

Not the scouting trip.

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It's the plan of the man to keep a brother down.

—and get zero relevant results.

ChatGPT did, however, tell me that I'm not crazy. The melodic sentence was popular, as part of Black American slang, when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. I didn’t need ChatGPT to tell me this. For whatever reason, it’s one of the things I recall from my very white childhood.

Anyway, while not on vacation in Paris, I came to the conclusion that vacation is the plan of the man to keep a brother—and really most Americans—down.

As you know, my wife and I spent April in Paris. All month I worked in the morning and a little here and there in the afternoon. The deeper into the month we entered, the more it felt like we were “living” there.

Just when the barista knows your name and you’ve followed the same route back to the apartment enough to look for a different one, it’s time to go home.

I didn’t view this as a vacation.

In fact, I don’t view any of the travel we do as vacation. I view it all as an extension of our life into other settings. My job—self-employed freelancer who often writes about my experience and what’s happening around me—helps create this effect, but I don’t think that’s the only factor.

The whole two-weeks-off-and-a-handful-of-holidays setup has never sat well with me. And it shouldn’t sit well.

Think about it. Like so many other toxic elements, small amounts of vacation time—how much you get, what you’re going to do with it—has become uncritically baked into American culture.

People have become to numb to the way most U.S. companies structure vacation—as if it’s all good. There’s little more than an it is what it is shrug of the shoulder when Americans compare their situation to how “vacation” works across Europe.

During the first half of April, we saw a ton of Americans in Paris. Like a ton.

It took me a few days to put two and two together. Spring break. They were on spring break.

I wondered how many of these families coordinated their vacation “requests” with their kids’ time off school.

When we came home, I saw this post on LinkedIn (which I recently saw someone refer to as a digital homeless shelter for the unemployed):

In Spain, it’s puente. But if the holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, some people take a very long break and call it an acueducto.

There’s something not-so-subtle in all of this.

Americans often joke about all of the vacation they take in countries like Spain and France.

Many people in the United States treat it like an amenity—something to be grateful for, like health insurance—rather than a basic part of how life should work. Some even feel guilty for taking vacation.

Much of this discussion pertains to people with full-time jobs.

I don’t follow a holiday schedule. Never have. I likely never will.

I work—at least a little—pretty much every single day. Even here, full-time employees don’t understand my schedule. A few can’t seem to comprehend that I work on a holiday, but, again, my gig is different.

What’s not different is the way we view not merely time off and what to do with it, but how it gets assigned to us.

The American perception of vacation isn’t freedom. It’s a coping mechanism for a system that makes everyday life harder than it needs to be.

In places like France or Spain, you don’t escape from life. You live it—consistently—without waiting for permission.

And if your physical environment, your social norms, and your institutions don’t support that way of living, it’s long past time to question not just how you take time off, but why you need it—as a departure from “real life”—in the first place.

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But the thing is I didn’t even expect to feel the magnitude of the difference so strongly between the parts of Paris with cars and the parts of Paris without them. Or the parts with “normal” levels of auto traffic versus the parts with little to none.

It’s funny what we’ve decided to accept as normal in society. Especially in the United States where we—or is it they now—equate bustling urban environments with traffic congestion.

Suggest ways to reduce or eliminate motor vehicles, and people in the US freak out. Businesses rely on false intuition that fewer automobiles will lead to decreased sales. Residents—honestly, I don’t know what their problem is. But a large enough majority of people in the country to matter come up with an endless funnel of lamebrain excuses as to why pedestrian environments are a bad idea—except those of the novelty variety that you drive to, enjoy for the day, then pull back into your driveway after a 30-minute “ride.”

None of this is to say that everyone was in favor of how Paris radically flipped the script on cars. After decades of dominance and destruction, it’s funny to watch spurned car drivers play the victim as the city effectively looked them straight in the eyes and told them to go fuck themselves. More on that specifically later this month.

But—bottom line—Paris went to a much-needed extreme to remove cars, reduce traffic, drastically cut pollution, and exponentially increase enjoyment throughout large swaths of the city. And it’s not done yet.

I touched on bits and pieces last month, but this is one of the most recent stories of what happened there in case you missed it.

It’s nothing short of incredible and inspiring in the sense that it shows what’s possible.

Anywhere. Even in the United States.

That’s really what I want us all to take away from this post—that no matter how shitty things seem and how nobody seems to want to use their legislative and other types of power for the greater good, it can happen. And that’s super important because, as I noted last time: In the end, it’s really the core question this newsletter asks—where’s the best place for me to live and why now and in the future?

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And none of this is a cue to pull out the laundry list that leads with Europe is small and old/the US is big and young so you can’t… whatever. Those are not even excuses. They’re empty claims because any semblance of truth in those statements connects loosely, if at all to what we’re actually talking about here.

If Paris can do what it did, so can Los Angeles. It has nothing to do with size or age and everything to do with societal and political will mixed with equal amounts of vision and smarts.

And the modern-day reality is that cities and suburbs need to build for a present and a future much, much less reliant on—and even without—cars. Motor vehicle transportation should no longer be considered a primary component or consideration in a modern society. I can spew—and have spewed—a laundry list that actually makes sense in that regard.

But today—let’s focus on that feeling that's more than a feeling.

And—to the best of my ability—let’s try to illustrate the feeling with images. Sadly, it’s beyond my ability to capture the feeling. Plus, I never take enough pictures even after a period of time when I felt like I had my phone out of my pocket all of the time.

Consider this a progression of bad to better to the best in Paris.

The first image is a typical street—dedicated mostly to auto traffic with little, if any space for bikes and narrow sidewalks. While you’re more likely to find these streets outside of core central Paris, they still exist in the center and—often—around some of the big tourist landmarks.

The next five images do a pretty decent job of showing the progression—of showcasing the different environments Paris has managed to sculpt out of what was car-dominated chaos.

It’s common to see streets split in half—with equal space for two-way bicycle traffic and one-way auto traffic. Or one-way auto traffic alongside one-way bicycle traffic. Or—even better, as shown in the last image—an entire massive city street completely turned over to bikes and pedestrians with the exception of taxis and some delivery vehicles.

I’m such an idiot for not taking photos of what are pretty much pedestrian-only parts of Paris. I thought I did, but, unless I can’t find them, I didn’t. But just imagine the streets that front these buildings being full of people and bikes constantly. Every 5-10 minutes you see a taxi, a delivery truck, or a car (random local traffic I think) pass through, often waiting (patiently) for people and bikes.

The difference between the images with cars and the ones without them is just incredible to experience.

From bad to better to the best, yes you can feel it. When it’s bad, everything feels more tense. Paris crowds get relegated to small spaces on either side of suffocating auto traffic. The environment is loud. It smells. It feels more dangerous and unsettling.

Every single move towards the best feels decidedly better.

Your senses open up without emotionally intimidating clutter. You hear the good parts of the city better—the chatter of conversation, the clinking of plates and glasses, the bell of a bicycle, the actual sound of your feet on the pavement—rather than the low-frequency thrum of idling engines. You realize that bustling doesn’t mean frantic—nor should it or does it have to.

And that brings us back to our core mission.

As I also noted the other day:

Valencia is an urban gem in its own right. Coming back here, I’ve been noticing cars and their attendant forms of pollution that I didn’t notice before. But does that mean that I have to move to Paris!?

I never once considered it.

When we got back to Valencia and walked the streets of our neighborhood, I had a smile from ear to ear. The kind of goofy smile you can’t wipe off.

That says a lot.

If Valencia has room to improve—to use Paris as an example, as inspiration—then clearly every single city in America should take note of what’s happening in France.

But that’s always been the difference between European cities and American ones. Since my days studying urban planning, it has been like this.

European cities could stand pat and rest comfortably as shining examples of great urbanism. But they—by and large—don’t. They progress.

American cities have so much room not merely for improvement, but to treat people humanely and they—by and large—not only don’t, but scoff at the mere suggestion of real change.

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When you ask yourself, “Where is the best place for me to live?” you’re really asking what type of system you want to be a part of. Do you want to be a part of the one that forces you to fight for every inch of sidewalk, or the one that hands the keys of the city back to the people who actually live there?

Do you want to grow old in places that treat you like a second-class citizen—forced into reclusion—if you don’t want to or can no longer drive? Do you want to live in a place that takes no action against environmental degradation—be it climate change or urban noise pollution?

I could go on—but Paris excels in all of these areas and more. Spain, including Valencia, does incredibly well, but can still do better in some areas. And make no mistake—it’s happening in places such as Barcelona with its super blocks.

New paragraph—the United States doesn’t belong in the same breath as these places. And that’s a shame. For a nation that brags about its ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit, it fails to exercise it in ways other than those that make the rich richer and decrease quality of life for a majority of its citizens.

Paris is proving that the transition is possible—even when it’s messy, even when drivers push back, even when the loudest voices insist it can’t be done.

It’s a reminder that if you can’t find that life where you are, it exists somewhere else.

And if enough people start to see that the novelty of a walkable street should actually be the baseline for a civilized life, maybe the excuses in places like the United States will finally run out.

Anything is possible.

You just have to stop accepting the bad as inevitable.

It’s the single most important question you can ask in relation to just about any point in life. In the end, it’s really the core question this newsletter asks and—hopefully—helps you with.

Today. Tomorrow. Retirement. If you want to move abroad.

Often, today, tomorrow, and retirement are easier to figure out. You have experience with where you want to live and—if you’re headed toward retirement as an American—you’ve often spent enough time in Arizona, Florida, or one of the Carolinas to have a pretty good sense of how you’ll feel day to day.

For moving abroad it’s an entirely different ball game.

As I was writing this piece, I read another article by , who moved to France when she was 68!

Recently she visited Spain with family:

I’d been in Madrid for less than three hours — the time it took to get from the railway station where I’d just arrived from Montpellier, France, to the Mercado de San Miguel, where the tapas were, ‘oh my god, I want to live here.’

“I know, I do too,” said my daughter. She and her husband had flown in from Seattle just the day before. “Can you believe it?” she said as we passed stall after stall of amazing displays. I said, no, I couldn’t. I’d never seen anything quite like it — and bear in mind that I’d been living in France, not exactly a slouch when it comes to amazing food.

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If you’ve ever spent time in a move abroad Facebook Group, you’ve likely heard this idea of the scouting trip. I don’t think Janice’s family was on one, but it’s often that type of experience that leads to one.

And—for the record—yes, food in France is fine, but it doesn’t compare to what we live every single day here in Spain. More on that later this month.

Anyway—within 30 seconds you see some variation of this in the online forums:

We’re taking a scouting trip to Valencia in May, where should we go!?

What actually happens on these trips?

Based on my experience and observation, the answer can only be between very little and nothing unless you stay for considerably more than a month.

Scouting trip is just a more sophisticated way to say you’re going to be a tourist for a few days to maybe a few weeks who looks at for rent signs in windows more than the typical tourist.

People who operate in the relocation industry love to tout scouting trips as important because they’re good for business. They raise more questions than answers and—of course—these people opportunistically thrive on answering those questions, twinged with uncertainty and scary wrinkles, only they and their commissioned experts can help you iron out.

Valencia seemed great, but what’s it like during—or what’s it like when… insert the same unknown here that you would have had without your scouting trip.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t visit a place before moving there.

If you read this newsletter regularly you know that, more than most people, I think place—the very specific particulars of a place—matters. But even the greatest places to visit or spend some extended time might not be suitable for who you are and the daily life you crave.

30 days in Paris was about what we expected. Just when the barista knows your name and you’ve followed the same route back to the apartment enough to look for a different one, it’s time to go home.

From a purely physical, urban planning perspective, I should want to move to Paris tomorrow. It’s freaking incredible—the bike and pedestrian infrastructure, the middle finger stuck out loudly, proudly, and constantly to car drivers across large swaths of the city. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Paris is special.

Valencia is an urban gem in its own right. Coming back here, I’ve been noticing cars and their attendant forms of pollution that I didn’t notice before. But does that mean that I have to move to Paris!?

I never once considered it.

When we got back to Valencia and walked the streets of our neighborhood, I had a smile from ear to ear. The kind of goofy smile you can’t wipe off.

I know who I am. I know what I like. I know how I want to live in the day-to-day. I got tired of hacking it in the United States. I’d have to hack in Paris. There’s no hacking it in Valencia. It’s like I’ve stepped into a turnkey version of the infrastructure and amenities I need to live the life I want to live now and for the duration—the one best suited for who I am.

For all intents and purposes, we did a scouting trip to Paris. It checked a ton of boxes. But it checked them alongside key pieces of knowledge and experience, including:

• a strong sense of who I am and what I want, and

• nearly a year and a half of life on the ground in Valencia.

There’s no I want to live here moment (which, I know, is mostly just something people say).

That’s something you feel when you eat food that blows away what you can get at home.

Which really amounts to shallow bullshit.

I mean—for example—the apples suck in France. I eat an apple a day, which means I eat a large serving of local candy per day in Spain. That piece of knowledge—accumulated over thirty days—meant more than any three-hour lunch.

For the record, we didn’t have any three-hour lunches and, if you’re going to eat an apple in Paris, get a pink lady—at least in April, they’re not terrible.

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Thirty days doesn’t tell you everything.

But it tells you enough to stop fooling yourself.

Enough to separate what feels good in a moment from what actually works in the day-to-day.

And that’s the difference between visiting a place—and knowing whether you belong there.

I almost can’t believe we’ve been here for a year. At times, it still feels surreal in a sense. But in another—most likely—common and practical sense, it all feels very real given that we knew why we moved and exactly what to expect—in the day-to-day—at our destination.

I have some—what I think is approaching big—news to report that connects to a few key themes:

• Working in spurts.

• Working less now so you can work less longer.

• Realizing that more work doesn’t always equal more money.

• And how life can flow here and there in the day-to-day as a self-employed freelancer—all aimed at working less while still advancing and getting shit done.

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I love seeing people without—as far as I know—urban planning backgrounds make points that come straight out of urban planning.

You often see this happen when an American spends a considerable amount of time living in Europe.

When you study planning, you have a lot of this context—even if it’s not lived context—already.

So, when you finally make it to Europe and spend some time, living there doesn’t feel like an adventure.

It just feels like it makes sense.

In his video, Baur discusses how living in Europe has ruined the United States for him.

He can’t go back.

After nearly 16 months in Europe—including this month in Paris—I concur.

If for some reason—and I hate even speaking these words—I could no longer live in Spain, I would not go back to the United States.

There’s just no way I can imagine living there again.

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I didn’t come to Europe looking for a different political system or lifestyle experiment.

I came because I knew everyday life would work differently here. That the daily routines I love—that we all rely on so much—would require less effort. I wouldn’t have to hack, then still fall short of the type of city life I’ve always wanted.

In the US, you live how you live because you have no other choice. If you don’t subscribe to the prevailing car culture and everything it entails, you’re rendered a second-class citizen in most parts of the country.

None of the shortcomings of America—in isolation or relative to Europe—are a reflection on most Americans. You’re simply a product of the system you live inside. While you can hack the system to your preferences, you ultimately have no choice but to accept it. That is—if you opt for as content and optimistic a life as you can have.

If you hit the point where the upside of leaving outweighs any benefits of staying, maybe you explore a move. With your head on straight, this can work for a lot of people.

Quite a few people arrive in Europe and realize they’re more American than they thought. And that’s okay.

But—for many—once you experience a city where:

• you walk most places

• kids move independently

• public space feels normal

• streets move slowly

• daily life is outside

It’s hard to return to a system where:

• every trip requires a car

• public space feels hostile

• everything is spread out

Not because you hate the United States.

But because the contrast becomes impossible to ignore.

And—I’m telling you—having an urban planning background or a history of living in and putting up with American cities helps.

You arrive with the context most Americans lack.

You don’t leave the United States because you suddenly dislike the country. Any discontent has likely festered for decades.

It definitely did for me.

Spain didn’t give me my urban planning perspective or anti-war, anti-right wing penchant. I’ve had those things since arriving in San Francisco in 1999.

You leave because once you experience cities that work differently, the friction of the old system becomes impossible to ignore. And the irony dawns on you—the US organizes everything with the stated goal of removing friction. Then, even as it fails to achieve that goal, it runs around beating its chest as if it has experienced unprecedented success.

That’s nothing but bullshit.

So in many ways, Europe is better. Not perfect. But—from what I’ve seen and experienced, particularly in Valencia—it’s a better place to live.

The basic mechanics of daily life—how people move, meet, and exist in public space—simply make more sense.

And once that becomes obvious, it’s very hard to imagine going back.

I’ve been publishing this newsletter consistently for a long time. Writing it takes real time and energy, and like most independent work, it only survives if readers support it.

If this series helped you see where you live a little more clearly—how it works, why it feels the way it does, and whether it’s actually working for you—consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Bicycles.

So much so that I worked at a bike shop in Southern California while studying urban planning.

At the shop, we had a balance bike or two in stock. We kept one out and always tried to entice the American helicopter parents who frequented the store to buy it instead of a set of training wheels to “teach” their kids how to ride a bike.

In the center background of that image, there is a balance bike—two wheels, no pedals.

As we watched the kid in blue ride through the plaza, he was picking his feet up off the ground for seconds at a time and, periodically, letting his left or right touch the ground for a second—for balance.

Of course, he has no clue it’s happening—he’s just having fun—but he’s learning how to balance and how to ride a bike.

It’s a European thing. Or, at least, that’s how we tried to sell it to these American parents. Even with that cachet, most didn’t buy it. They wanted training wheels.

It’s funny because we actually had their—and their kids’—best interests in mind. We made an extra commission on training wheels, but nothing more than the standard on balance bikes.

Balance bikes are just better.

Yet, Americans are intent on making the process of learning how to ride a bike another in a long line of anxiety-producing moments for their children. I’m guilty as charged. I didn’t know better about this—and many other things—when I was raising my now 22-year-old daughter.

With training wheels, you’re not learning how to balance. You’re not really learning anything. The build-up to the moment when you take the training wheels off is so intense—so momentous—that it invariably gets delayed multiple times.

Then, the day comes. Nerves are high. Your kid watches as you remove the bolts of the training wheels with a wrench. They get on the bike while you hold the back of the saddle, keeping them steady until you nervously let go.

The kid wobbles—you can barely call it balances—and usually ends up slowing to a near stop, tilting to one side, and letting the bike hit the ground as they keep themselves up with their dominant leg.

Then, they use the bike without training wheels a lot like a balance bike. With a few hours or days, they learn how to balance and—for the rest of their life—it’s just like riding a bike.

The balance bike approach removes most of the drama from the entire process.

Kids fall occasionally, but they get back up. And because they were balancing all along, the moment when they finally ride a real bike with pedals barely feels like a milestone.

There’s no big reveal.

They were basically riding the bike the entire time.

That approach reflects a broader cultural difference you notice quickly in Europe.

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That’s the heart of Los Angeles right there.

And a freeway runs through it.

The drivers in that traffic—which is usually worse—will choose an exit, maybe from the 101 or one of the other freeways connected to the 101.

Then, they’ll proceed to drive in freeway mode through the city to their destination, which is often one of the largely residential enclaves that surround the urban cores scattered throughout the LA area.

Everything is designed to rapidly move you through space and time when traffic isn’t an obstacle.

You have a destination and everything between you and that destination is in the way.

I bring up Jane Jacobs a lot. That’s because she’s important.

Her ideas could actually make America great again. But not many people have a real interest in doing that.

From an urban planning perspective, Manhattan is about as good as it gets in the United States of America.

Jacobs deserves far more credit for this than she receives.

In the 1960s, highway builder Robert Moses planned to slash a ten-lane elevated freeway through the heart of SoHo and Little Italy. He called it the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX). To Moses, these weren't neighborhoods; they were just blight standing in the way of a car pipeline.

Jacobs led the grassroots insurrection that killed the project entirely in 1969, effectively saving Manhattan from making the same mistakes that plagued cities through the US, including San Francisco.

The defeat of LOMEX saved the historic, cast-iron loft buildings of SoHo and transformed New York’s approach to urban development away from massive highway projects and toward preservation.

Manhattan avoided what ended up being Los Angeles’s fate and present legacy.

When I was a kid living in Upstate New York, I didn’t think twice about taking the Robert Moses Parkway between my hometown of Niagara Falls and neighboring Lewiston. Years later, when I studied urban planning in San Francisco, I discovered how destructive Moses and the things he built were.

Most people don’t think twice. There’s no reason to think twice. When you grow up American, few people encourage you to think twice—especially if you’re from a working/middle class background.

So we ignore features of the built environment that profoundly impact—and, all too often, degrade—our day-to-day experiences and overall quality of life.

Given how freeways dominate and dissect the landscape throughout Los Angeles—and many other cities—it’s no surprise what happens when cities attempt to calm traffic away from them.

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