Canada's Love of Condos

[BIMBAM]

The differences between American and Canadian cities actually are quite significant and explain this situation. I'll list the reasons.

1. Safer city centres that comes with low crime.
2. High Real estate prices. Condos are more economical when prices are high, and the US is coming out of real estate implosion.
3. Our city centres are vibrant, much less of them got turned into parking lots because we lacked the "White Flight" phenomenon during the late twentieth century.
4. Our public schools have a different funding structure so inner city schools are perfectly acceptable. Bad inner city schools int he US forces any family that can afford it to move to the suburbs.
5. High Canadian gas prices.
6. Great public transportation in the major city centres, but super congested, relatively smaller urban freeways which disincentivize people from sprawling further because they don't want the commute.
7. Greenbelts in Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto (Ottawa's being the least effective).

Note that the Condos are being built in Canada's big cities, but smaller centres are continuing to sprawl with single family homes.