As an educated young professional who emigrated from Canada, car dependency and low density cities were major reasons I left. Suburban sprawl is a prison without a car, and I have no intentions of driving. With that said, I clearly don't fit the profile in the article perfectly, since most of my fellow emigrants are going to the US, which has those same issues.
Curious where you went! Europe? Japan? Singapore? I'm on a similar boat. There are a few areas in the US and Canada that aren't car dependent, but not many.
Tokyo! It's a city with its pluses and minuses, but having already spoken Japanese before coming, I enjoy the everyday life more than any other place I've been.
A big difference I would say between a place like Tokyo and most urbanist cities in NA is that public transit is overwhelmingly the default here. My experience is that even in Vancouver or Montreal, it wouldn't be strange to have an acquaintance or relative who lives in one of the extended suburbs or a neighboring city, and for whom driving is default.
However, properly designed cities like Houston, TX are well-poised to take advantage of self-driving cars. Very soon car ownership won't be necessary even in sparse cities, but with all the advantages of having a lot of living space and cheap housing.
Fair. I disagree with your conclusion, but I don't think it's an unfounded position to take.
Nevertheless, I imagine this is an unusually salient issue for us. I imagine for the average Canadian emigrant, the fact that the US offers a greater quantity of better quality, higher paying, jobs, is a much bigger contributor than urban planning.