[someone123]

As an aside I am happy we have Scandinavia as an example to look to since so many planning issues there are applicable to Canada and since they frankly tend to solve problems in a better way than the country directly south of us that we tend to obsess over.

This is something I notice most on the East Coast but there is a lot of defeatism in Canada about how we can't have nice things because this is a small and sparsely populated country or because of our winters.

Examples:

- We have to have expensive cell phone bills because this country is so big (even though most of it doesn't have cell service...).
- It's not worth investing in cycling infrastructure in cities that get snow and ice sometimes.
- We can't really have a pedestrian culture and street-oriented retail will never compete with the malls in places that have less than perfect weather year-round. Outdoor shopping can only exist in cities like LA, Miami, or Honolulu.
- We can't have good transit and rail service outside of giant cities with millions of people.
- We can't have nice modern architecture in cities that have a winter (e.g. we need Soviet-style concrete apartment blocks with small windows instead of glass curtain wall).

Thankfully some of these arguments are dying.