For example, in the States a community is proud if it has an airport. Here, people buy houses next to airports then complain when they hear an aeroplane.
Actually, just the opposite. It's for that reason that airports are disappearing, not being built. As soon as people move in around the airport, it's operating hours shrink, it's uses shrink, and eventually it disappears. It's a big problem in the US.
I should like to say, however, that I'd disagree that the US is "doing it right." Just differently. I'd disagree that the US does it better.
The US is a bigger place. More infrastructure, more aircraft, more capability, and lower costs overall. But not necessarily better. Less expensive doesn't mean better. There are great opportunities, a lot of freedom in what you can fly and where you can fly it, and when. But there are indeed downsides.
While yes, I realize this is a private pilot forum (and I'm posting here because being a private pilot to me is what aviation is about), many pilots who undertake flight training do so with the idea of flying professionally. Many don't make it. For those who do, in the US, it can mean ten or twenty years of near starvation. A position in Europe that requires 300 hours has required four or five thousand hours of experience for US pilots in the past. I worked with a young man in the middle east this past year who was put out that he wasn't flying bigger and faster equipment, and I was shocked that anybody let him near an airplane at all. He had virtually no experience, but kept pointing out that in his home country airline pilots routinely had less than him.
Whereas a pilot in the UK or France or Italy or Greece can go get a job, during much of my career, if I wanted such a job I'd have to put in five to ten times the effort and have 20 times the experience, just to be considered. It's definitely a different world. Presently, things are different; pilots are hiring into regional airlines in the US with 300 hours...which I find objectionable and disgusting but that's really beside the point. Traditionally that's not the case.
The rentals that are available outside the US just aren't to be found most places in the US. When I lived in Australia, gypsy moths and tiger moths were available for rent. You'll not find anything like that in the US. Another thread on the Slingsby Firefly indicates another type you just won't find available in the US. You can find Cessnas galore, and pipers, and mooneys. You can find a lot of Katanas any more...and of course the usual variety of twins, mostly seminoles and senecas and the occasional Cessna 310.
Private pilots can't fly for hire in the US...no loopholes allowing aerial photography or flying skydivers. Private pilots can't fly for compensation either.
Air legislation is more simple, flight plans are easier. Night isn't necessarily IFR, though a lot of places (west, particularly) it's certainly instrument conditions once the sun goes down.
And don't forget actual mountains...though some consider them advantages, some disadvantages. All you want.