I am in Europe now and am an American, I’ve lived in various major cities in USA including east and west coast. I have also lived in a handful of major European cities. So while my opinion is anecdotal still, it’s not uninformed.

Comparatively yes, Europeans live in small cupboards by and large. There has to be some data on per capita living spaces between the two though. Largely anecdotally, I’d say people in NYC who are interns or new in careers out of school live in the same sized places that people in, for example, London or Brussels live for their entire lives, per capita speaking.

Additionally they drive much smaller cars, as you probably know.

None of this is a bad thing, it does tend to be an artifact of smaller, walkable cities and a sacrifice for that sort of thing.