European Regrets Moving to the US and Feels Lonely Due to Car Culture

• Ilya Davydov was raised in England, Russia, and Switzerland and came to the US for college in 2022.
• He said the US’s car culture makes for dull, sprawling cities that are unsafe for cyclists like him.
• He regrets moving because he’s had a hard time making friends and getting around by bike.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ilya Davydov, 20, about his regret over moving to the US from Switzerland. Davydov was raised in Europe and moved to College Park, Maryland, a college town about 10 miles outside of Washington, DC, to attend the University of Maryland in 2022. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

College Park is essentially one main arterial road with a few bars around it, and then surrounding it is mostly single-family homes with wide roads and quick cars, which doesn’t feel very welcoming as a pedestrian or cyclist — or anybody without a car, for that matter.

I like our campus. When I go in the streets, sure, I’ll see a lot of students. But the second you want to venture outside of it, you’re constrained significantly if you don’t have a car or a motorcycle.

I bike a lot, and it’s a very sketchy place to ride a bike. I’ve been hit by cars multiple times.

Reduced mobility does definitely affect me and contribute to social isolation. People on campus mostly keep to themselves. There aren’t that many places to congregate.

I still have friends, but our collective mobility is reduced, so I am not as able to go to places that I would like to visit ideally. There aren’t that many cafés or concert venues immediately surrounding, so either you stay within, or you have to venture to DC.

Without a car, it’s hard for me to connect with people

I don’t have a driver’s license, and the bus service is rather unreliable here. Since I got into a car crash on my bike, I’m forced to walk around.

The roads are very loud. Its main purpose is to move cars, so you’re not as welcome to go there.

Streets are destinations in other countries. Pedestrian streets, for example, are a destination in and of itself. You may walk around, sit on the bench, and enjoy the weather.

If you have reduced mobility, you are less social, so you’re unhappy. Therefore, it affects all of your areas of life, for me at least.

It’s hard for me to connect. In a typical afternoon, I have a few hours of free time. During that time in previous places I used to live, I would meet up with friends and walk to a coffee shop and then just walk around, or we would go for a casual stroll in the park and just discuss things. Or we would go explore a new café in town or maybe a new bar. This was in Zurich, in Moscow, and in England.

The bike culture in Europe is way better than in the US

I was actually born in the US, but we went back to Europe after two years. I grew up in England and in Switzerland, then in Russia, and then we went back to Switzerland.

I didn’t want to live in the same place throughout my 20s. I wanted to try something new.

I knew that the US had certain issues, but overall I was pretty positive. I think that I underestimated the degree to which the factors that the US lacks would be important to me and how much I would end up missing them in the end.

Here, a bicycle is perceived more so as a toy than a legitimate medium of transportation.

College Park, from what I understand, is a fairly standard college town. So it’s not a specific complaint about this specific place, it’s more so about how US cities in general are built.

It’s like a manifestation of US urban planning as a whole — mostly planning around cars resulting in low-density housing and everything is spread further apart.

Switzerland doesn’t have that good of a bicycle infrastructure, but it’s built significantly more densely, so you can either walk to places or you can bike there.

The Netherlands has significantly more bike trails and bike lanes, and at the same time has reduced car size and reduced car speeds. A lot of people cycle there, so a lot of the drivers are also cyclists. So when they pass you, they can view things from your perspective. They slow down and they go around you.

There are definitely changes that could be made here that would improve things. Reducing speed and reducing the throughput of cars. Proper bicycle infrastructure, at least around campus, and widened sidewalks would definitely improve the situation for me.

I don’t think College Park can be Zurich or London, but I don’t think it has to be.

Two things can coexist: You can simultaneously be grateful for the opportunity and acknowledge how good an academic place can be while also being affected by the negative aspects that are non-academic.

Even though this is a great academic opportunity, the hit to the social aspect of my life has made me regret this decision overall.