As someone that moved to Utrecht five years ago (and also from California)....you could not have picked a better place. Infrastructure is amazing and quality of life is superb. Of course not everything is perfect and cost of living has sky rocketed but I assume you work in tech and everything will be fine. There's quite a lot of high quality cities but Utrecht is really nice (although the Netherlands is a bit boring but that's subjective of course).

My brother recently moved to Tilburg and I've visited a couple times and had a great time there. It's a quick train ride to Rotterdam, where there is lots to do. Then there are some nice trails and towns nearby to cycle to, including in Belgium. And given the proximity to Belgium there are lots of great breweries nearby and so the beer quality in many bars is really excellent. Sure it's maybe not as alive as NYC or London but you will find life if you look and the standard of living, when considering basics like housing, transit and food quality, is unmatched to any I've experienced.

What would you recommend someone do who also wants to make the same type of move?

Currently, I’m working for a data privacy startup and have hopes that they’ll have a physical presence in the EU in the next few years and would sponsor my move.

Well..every country is different but in my experience it's super easy to get a work visa in most European countries if you're in any technical field. In general I would figure out maybe which country you want to move to first and then start looking into companies, but that's assuming you are ok to leave your current company. This is the one situation where I heavily relied on third party recruiters as they knew obviously know the scene better than I do and then on subsequent jobs I figured out on my own once I got the lay of the land.

The tech hiring market is strong but if you can self employ and are a US citizen the Dutch American Friendship Treaty is interesting.

That's great to hear!! Might try to do a house swap there this summer. Houten especially looks interesting.

Belgium also has excellent biking infrastructure!

If you look at Bruges, there's literally a cycling junction underneath a busy turnaround or cycling bridges going over busy highway roads ( those are there when your enter/exit the city)

Throughout the city, most roads are one-way, while bycicles can go two-ways. So bicycling is literally the most efficient way to cross the city.

Eg. To my work, it's a 5 minute trip with the bicycle because there is a bicycle route to it. With the car, the road takes 10 minutes ( normally 20 because of traffic). So it's x 4 as efficient for me

Reproducible: https://www.google.be/maps/dir/Marie+Popelinplantsoen,+8000+...

Old car-free zones are tempting! Rothenburg ob der Tauber was also one we considered, or Venice.

Fun fact: Bruges, where i live, is called "Venice of the north".

There's also a really good film: "in Bruges" - https://youtu.be/96harmMOyiY

Or a free running movie - "what tourists don't see" - https://youtu.be/2VToZ-vS2Vc

I adore Bruges, and Ghent for that matter, and have been a few times. The first time I went for whatever reason it felt virtually empty, weirder still since there was some kind of marathon that day. I ended up going to a centuries-old bar and having spaghetti (and beer of course) of all things.

Probably one of the few marathons where finalists receive a free beer ( Brugse Zot ) afterwards.

And probably the only city in the world with a beer pipeline: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/halve-maan-brewery-beer-... !

A place with its priorities straight :-)

Isn't Venice basically like Disney Land because of tourism pushing out locals?

yeah, most of the old car-free centres (Rothenburg odt too) are like this.

Both of my kids grew up in Madison WI. Now they're both in college, car free, and doing fine. This isn't Amsterdam, but the bike infra and urban layout is good enough. You have to choose where to live. There are neighborhoods that are convenient for nearby shopping, and others that are more sprawled.

I don't think it has to be perfect for kids to learn good habits. More important is the parents modeling those habits themselves, and choosing activities that reinforce good habits.

Did you look at Portland, OR? I moved here from San Francisco, where I was terrified of cycling.

Here there are lots of bike trails, complete streets reserved for bicycles (“neighborhood greenways”), and even a bicycle/pedestrian only bridge for getting downtown. I can do a lot of my errands almost 100% on bike infrastructure without feeling at all unsafe.

I have even started going on bike rides for pleasure, which was never a thing I would have considered in San Francisco

I just found out about the trail that goes down the Eastside of the river and goes south, wrapping all the way to Gresham. It looks like it's all bike only. I haven't hopped on it yet but I'm gonna rent a bike maybe tomorrow or Monday and check it out.

Portland is definitely one of the more bike safe cities I've been in and it's awesome. It even inspired me to get into longboarding!

Yes but last summer's temps worry me.

That was an outlier, not the norm

With climate change we will likely continue seeing more extreme weather events, so the point seems valid. The Netherlands isn’t exactly immune though. Utrecht also got a heat wave last year, though still about 10F less than Portland.

There’s also the risk of water management generally in NL, with so much of the country below sea level

My opinion, It has been trending to have longer and warmer summers for several years now. (Source needed)

... for now...

I enjoy NJB and other similar Youtube channels (Adam Something and Oh the Urbanity! are great, highly recommended), and his opinions on transit and urbanism are really interesting and reasonable. But this "move to Netherlands" trope is slightly tiring. Its clear that NJB is enamored and I'm happy he's in love with the place -- and the city seems great! -- but "move to Netherlands" is hardly practical for most people, right? I don't even mean literal "most people in the world", but even the select audience of such channels probably can't (and doesn't want to) just move like that.

Some of the angstier videos are a bit hard to watch and come out like "look how great this and how awful anything outside Europe is". I recently relocated from Brazil to Canada, and some of that angst is almost comical to me (first world problems!). With that said, again, he is spot on about car-centric vs human-centric cities and all that. I lived in Europe for a while and most of the cities felt "more human" than up here.

True, but a lot of people _can_ move, but are afraid.

In Ireland half the people I know have lived in Canada, Aus, US, etc, at least for a while, and it's no big deal, but a lot of US-ians think moving abroad is basically moving to Mars.

Current Carmel resident and can confirm that it’s a pretty good option. There is a well maintained rail trail (the Monon) that bisects the city and lots of other paths that connect to it. You can get to most of the places in the city you’d want to go on the existing trails. And you can even get all the way to downtown Indianapolis on the trail.

what is "this bar"? there are cycling Meccas like Davis CA and Boulder CO where infrastructure is extensive and average trip distances are short.

I live in Davis. Biking is great here, but it’s not perfect.

The network of bike trails has been poorly maintained. The asphalt is badly cracked, which makes for a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride.

There are plenty of bike lanes on most streets, but almost no protected paths. Biking amongst cars is always stressful.

Most residents in town don’t actually bike that much. UC Davis students are forced to bike because most live off campus and obviously there’s little car parking available there. But I don’t see a remarkable amount of biking around town. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people in SF bike for day-to-day activities per-capita, such as shuffling kids around and picking up groceries.

All of this said, it’s still a nice place and biking here is nice. But it could be better.

I'll add that a lot of kids bike to school in Davis. I'm mostly disappointed that more adults don't bike as much as I'd expect.

"Would you let your ten year old cycle unattended?" Is the bar to me.

sacramento is a incredibly bikable city. i don’t understand when people say america isn’t good for bikes. european bike cities usually have 2 characteristics. bike paths and high density. the paths we obviously have less of here. but not none. and it’s less important here because our cities usually have more than 1 main way to get somewhere and you just ride on the small street, not the 6 lane wide one

and the density thing is different. utrecht is a good example, if you bike more than 2-3 miles you’re in the country side. farmland. sacramento you can keep going. sacramento has good bus routes and ones that you can put your bike on. the bay area is a great mix of density and other transit supplanting it like awesome bus and train system to get you farther

i think you should do a little more research of this first hand and not just look at death numbers. they don’t tell the whole story. phoenix area is a massive pre planned grid with 45mph expw all over. people live far apart. you might have destinations 30 miles away. and it’s hot. i wouldn’t call it bike friendly at all even if it has paths

Right, it's not at all. I meant culdesac specifically.

Downtown Sac is pretty good but I lived in the Pocket and Citrus Heights, both mediocre at best.

Madison, WI here. Never owned a car in my life

> Phoenix is interesting but 1) very small and 2) in Phoenix, which will struggle with summer survivability by the time my kids are middle ages.

I'm generally in favor of long term planning but in this case isn't #2 kind of going overboard? Their middle ages are ~35 years in the future. A better childhood will probably be worth them having to move 30+ years later. Heck, there is already only about a 50% chance [1] that an adult is living in the area where they grew up and that's just due to the normal ebb and flow of the economy.

[1] the surveys on this vary a lot. 50% looked like a reasonable average of several that showed up when I Googled.

I mean summer temps when they're in their 40's and possibly raising their own kids, assuming we don't address carbon emissions.

Portland's temps last summer have me spooked and I'd be even more worried about Phoenix.

My point is that when kids grow up they often move away from where they grew up. If, on the off chance that yours don't move away for college or career before they are raising their own kids, just as you are considering moving to find a better childhood for your kids they too can move to find a better childhood for their kids if Phoenix turns out to be a sweltering summer hellhole (or rather more of one than it already is).

Outlier events like last summer will become more frequent, but I think you will be hard pressed to find a better climate refuge than the PNW. The problem with climate change is that it eventually becomes a problem in one way or another for the entire globe. PNW is one of a handful of places that, while impacted, will be impacted less than most.

I got news for you. Biking in the rain sucks and there’s gonna be a lot more days of rain in Portland than days where it’s too hot to ride a bike.

Having lived in Ireland nearly a decade I'm pretty familiar with cycling in the rain.

It sucks, but is much nicer with decent clothing and infra.

I think he probably means middle childhood ages not "middle aged" in the normal sense of the phrase.

Unbelievably, he actually does mean when his kids are 40!

Indeed!

Carmel is nice, but man, they have some of the worst drivers ever.

A great argument for separated infra :-)