[chrisco255]

Canada might have certain urban areas with public transport, but huge swaths of the country depend on cars. That is the same situation as the U.S. except we've got 10x the population as Canada...so we've got more people in more places. As for Australia, a huge chunk of the country is desert, and most people are situated along the coasts.

The U.S. doesn't want urbanism. People by and large do not want to live in dense urban areas. Some people like it, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. With the remote work revolution, it's going to become even less appealing to live in a dense urban area.

[ghaff]

There's a trope here that the US is some incredible outlier when it comes to per capita auto ownership. It's not. It's in the same ballpark as other wealthy developed countries. It's poorer countries (in Europe and elsewhere) that have lower rates of car ownership. According to a recent Pew survey [1], the US has slightly lower per capita car ownership than Italy and is in the ballpark of countries like France, Germany, South Korea, and Japan.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/a-pew-sur...).

[dionidium]

People who don't want density should be free to avoid it. What they should not be allowed to do is pass laws that prevent the rest of us from enjoying the benefits of density. The primary reason we don't have increased density in the United States is that it's illegal in most cities to build enough new housing to meaningfully densify neighborhoods.