How to Choose the Best City to Live Abroad

Identify Your Essential Needs, Options, and Preferences

By Volker Poelzl
Updated 8/22/2019 by Transitions Abroad

If you have a chance to live in Amsterdam, you might want to give it a go.

What makes a city an attractive destination for foreigners is in part its financial strength, but in the eyes of most expats we have encountered and who have written about their experience it takes more than a booming economy to make a metropolis a great place to live. The combination of work opportunities, a vibrant business climate, a great quality of life, and the subjective "feel" makes a desirable destination. We offer our own suggested list of the top cities after describing the qualities you will want to consider.

For many expats, what is perceived as "quality of life" is important and encompasses everything that makes living in a city enjoyable—from the often-important cost of living, food, housing, transportation, arts and culture, leisure time activities, educational opportunities, climate, geographical location, health care, and safety, etc. What makes a city great depends not only on your interests and way of living but also on your age, family status, as well as professional and educational goals. What makes a city great can change over time, just as some move from city to city and place to place in their homeland. In sum, we have observed over the years that for many people choices about where to live are a matter of the perception of subjective quality over "objective" measurable quantity.

Day or night, you are always aware that you are walking through history in Rome, one of the many charms of a sensual and mysterious city.

Find Yourself a Great City to Live In

There are no absolute objective criteria or measurements to determine if a city is great. While it can be useful to follow human development indexes of prosperity and infrastructure development such as referenced below, finding your own great city to live in is a subjective choice involving your personal taste in combination with your unique situation and options. I found Rio de Janeiro to be noisy, chaotic, and congested, but I enjoyed the city's vibrant cultural life. Auckland, New Zealand, on the other hand, lacked the excitement of Rio de Janeiro, but the safe and quiet city is often mentioned in commercial media as one of the top ten most livable cities in the world. New York City and San Francisco are truly great American cities culturally but unaffordable for the vast majority, living quarters extremely cramped for the cost, educational options for children are often expensive or hard to find, yet many still flock and remain there for multicultural, aesthetic, and career reasons—for some there are no comparable alternatives in the U.S..

In Barcelona, the genius architect Gaudi left his unique mark everywhere, but there are so many other beautiful ancient cathedrals, medieval streets, and works of art to explore in a great city.

When preparing your own list of favorite cities, it's a good idea to write down qualities that are important to you.

For example, how important is culture to you, and what aspects?

• Local traditional cuisine or 3-star dining?
• Opera, pop, jazz, rap, or punk rock?
• A city full of parks and greenery?
• Lively street life?
• Booming nightlife? A city that never sleeps?
• Great food markets?
• Interesting architecture?
• Energetic and forward-thinking, relaxed, or a more romantic feel?
• Clean and orderly or messier and chaotic?
• View of foreigners by locals, pro, con, or indifferent?
• Place to start or move your familyy?

Or perhaps you seek a unique admixture of all of the above?

Such qualities will have a huge daily impact on your life abroad, so they should be at least a core consideration in your selection process.

Bridges are just one aspect of Prague's charm.

Cost of Living

Most likely, the single most important factor that will impact the quality of your life abroad is the cost of living in the city you choose. Unlike international employees who receive cost of living and moving allowances from their companies while working abroad, expats who move overseas on their own have to deal with these issues in unknown surroundings and on their own. Unless you are independently wealthy or have a large retirement fund, your income or available funds will have a large direct impact on the livability of a city. If the cost of rent, transportation, utilities, and food all exceed your budget, then even the most attractive city will not be livable for you.

For example, Auckland, New Zealand, was affordable, because the cost of living was low at the time and I had a job that paid my bills. On the other hand, as a student in Rio de Janeiro, I did not earn any money. Brazil's currency was stronger versus the dollar at the time, and eating out and other leisure activities were quite expensive. In New York City—where having money inherently opens up doors to an entirely different experience than living there without—you may still enjoy many aspects of the multicultural life, but the day-to-day grind will more likely eventually drain you even relative to all the great characteristics.

Lisbon seduces with its hillside neighborhoods and narrow alleys.

Buenos Aires is not generally ranked among the "most livable cities" in many surveys, but it has undeniable allure.

How to Get Started

To begin the process of researching cities where you might wish to relocate, ask yourself to think about the countries you know or those that entice you. It's important to establish a goal and purpose. What will you be doing there? Study, work, or primarily enjoying life? Are you going on a sabbatical, working on a personal project, performing research, immersing yourself in a foreign culture, or retiring?

Find websites, blogs, news feeds, and expat communities discussing these cities and keep up on current events so you get an idea about what to expect, and perhaps you can network some connections before you go. If your city of choice has disruptive transportation or garbage worker strikes every month, you might instead look for another city nearby. Read as many books, articles, and online reviews about your destination to learn as much as possible about your favorite city before making the final choice to move. Perhaps most importantly, you should also strongly consider taking at least one fact-finding trip just to make sure that your chosen city is what you expect, and that you really imagine feeling at home there for the long term.

Volker Poelzl is a Living Abroad Contributing Editor for Transitions Abroad. He has traveled in over 40 countries worldwide and has lived in 10 of them for study, research, and work.