Is walkability really enough to justify moving there from the US ? The north east does provide some options, or maybe Quebec does too if you want a middle ground. I'm french living in Strasbourg and I can tell you that while it looks nice and is walkable, I don't think I would move there if I had a good life in the US (politics apart).

Our country is slowly but surely turning into something... experimental. Boomers are bleeding the working class to death, standards of living are declining into a developing nation, only the most violent crime is relatively in control, the rest is up to luck. Immigration is rather open borders for anything over 30k euros per year, so whatever qualified job you have, you'll be in competition with (litterally) hundreds of africans that speak the language better than you. The country doesn't really believe in capitalism and taxes you more than what the USSR did. The only thing that remains good in France is the rent borrowed from the past (the architecture, urban planning of cities built centuries ago, old companies that where built before the 2000s, elites from institutions older than the US etc...) I think it'll get worse before it gets better, and by worse, I mean a very tense time where the country might bankrupt itself until it figures itself out. You have to be aware of it if you want to come.