You ignore the fact that many European cities are much smaller than the North American mega city landscape and still have lots of jobs in those cities. But it's also easier to have safer yet walkable and publicly transportabel neighborhoods in a city of 150k or 300k than 3 or 10 million.
There's plenty of American cities from 50k-300k, that's not a uniquely European thing.
None of the jobs where I grew up were in the city (Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton, largest employers were all suburban campuses save for the electric company and some colleges. Even the hospitals were off the highway.).
All the fun stuff was in the city though, so that's where we'd go once you got a friend of driving age.
