well, i did claim that if i can live without a car in san diego i can do it anywhere. dannyw does have a point about places like montana likely being a lot worse.

i can't think of any places like that in europe. european cities are simply not that spread out. so unless you live on a farm far from everywhere, you should be fine.

In Europe, urban centers are prohibitively expensive to live in if you want to avoid living in a slum.

Imagine if every city was San Francisco, especially in realtion to income.

In the end, I can live somewhat comfortably if I commute, essentially trading my time for lower crime rates and nicer surroundings.

which countries/cities are you talking about? i didn't make that experience in germany for example.

Germany is kind of a mixed bag here - situations are getting weird quickly if you search for Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg or Stuttgart, they get somewhat acceptable when you consider Berlin (but listen to them complaining about rent!), and in some areas, living is almost free (most of the Ruhrgebiet).

Also consider that if you are reading HN, you are likely to work in IT, which gives you a skewed idea on average income levels.

fair point. i did go by gut feeling, and haven't actually done any thorough comparison. and yeah, i can totally see that working in IT won't let me feel the pain of above average rent.

berlin is indeed interesting, one would think that with it being the capital city, the demand would rise, but i guess that east berlin is less popular, and that berlin also suffers from the overall reputation of east germany.

The population density of Montana is 2.7/km^2. Iceland is close with 3.5/km^2, then Norway and Finland (14 and 16/km^2). (Wikipedia)

Iceland has 824 cars/1000, Finland, 494 and Norway, 616.) The US overall has 811. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...)