It's because living in downtown Vancouver is expensive. Your rent probably comes close to covering the mortgage on one of those huge empty houses in the suburbs. That fresh baked good is probably ~$4 while the equivalent at Walmart is $1. No doubt it's a great lifestyle for well off DINKs. A lot harder to make it work for a family of 5 on 50k a year.

Plenty of American cities have this. I have three big grocery stores within a 2-7 minute walk. Myriad restaurants, bakeries, and cafes literally on the same block and within walking distance of me.

Vancouver is great, just wanted to call out the bias and massive overgeneralization in your statement.

While you are correct about Vancouver downtown, once you get o suburbs like Langley, Coquitlam, they are no different that what you are calling out American cities for.

If we limit this to downtowns, there are several cities in America that are similar (Boston, Seattle, SF, SanDiego, Austin, NYC to name a few).

I live in a US city.

I have a nature area, gym, pharmacy, grocery store, numerous restaurants, bar, and a bunch of other amenities you just listed. I live basically on the rail line so I can get to the rest of the city in 30 minutes (with more of said amenities) and am at the intersection of two major highways which means I have even more travel options. I'm 2 train stops from a smaller downtown which has every botique shop you can imagine.

I do live in a place that was specifically designed for this but these places are designed and aren't that unheard of in US cities. When I lived in the suburbs I had similar options a few minutes walk from my house.

One key difference that jumps out at me between various cities in Japan and Vancouver is that the COL seems significantly better in Japan. When I visited Vancouver I couldn't afford to stay in or even near the city, I had to find a place about 20 minutes away and even then it was pricey. Whereas in Japan I had no problem finding affordable stays in city centers in all of the major cities I visited, including Tokyo.

I will admit my ignorance here however and acknowledge there are likely myriad other variables at play here that I'm not considering.

> American cities don't want this

You convinced yourself Canada doesn't have suburbs or rural areas?

Have you ever left your province or even your four square blocks?

Canada is 98% rural by land area (though ~18% of the population lives there).

Canada basically IS the US with metric and the people talk funny.

America is too big to compare it with one single city of Canada.

I live in an American city. I have a yard large enough to play frisbee with my dog. I walk downstairs to go to work. I can walk to a good taqueria and take pole dancing classes a few doors up (someday). There is an evil bank that I could walk to but don't. Cafe, Thai, Soul Food, Vietnamese, Pizza. Closer than all of the walking distance I mentioned is light rail that goes downtown and further. Someday it might even go to Vancouver (the other one sadly :( )

And outside of a handful of New England towns, wherever that kind of city planning exists in the US, those parts of town are inhabited by half-dead zombies on meth whispering threats at you as you walk by. Not a pleasant experience. That's why sane people in the US usually move to suburbia as soon as they can afford a car.

Nowadays. The last 50 years haven't been kind to people in the US.

All of your complaints sound like someone who is projecting American values and behavior onto another culture.

> Or new local businesses cannot start because they can't buy property limiting options for consumers?

Are a lot of new local businesses starting up in America's suburbs? Is it a problem to have the same shops operating in the community for decades if they serve the community's needs?

Even in Manhattan I saw 'shops' which seemed to have a similar square footage to my bathtub; if there's an opportunity people will find a way.

> And public transit stops become noise and litter parties.

If you have garbage cans at your transit stops and your populace are respectful towards each other then this is also not a problem. If your idea of a transit stop is somehow also some kind of rowdy social event then the problem is not urban planning.

Fundamentally though this is a common American attitude. Look at something that's new and different and say "This would be bad for these reasons", ignoring the fact that dozens of other Western and Eastern countries with dozens of different cultures and behaviors all do these things and it all works out fine.

It's the same as the argument about health care. Socialized medicine would be bad for reasons X, Y, Z, even though if you look at countries which have socialized medicine and a similar standard of living you'll see that not only do those countries not have those problems but also those countries have better health outcomes, longer life expectancy, and more efficient healthcare.

You say that none of this stuff would work in "a culture that isn't Japanese", but what you really mean is that it wouldn't work "in a culture which is American", so maybe that's a good place to start looking for things to change.

I can tell you haven't been to japan, the noise and litter issues aren't as much of a problem there.

Get to the bottom of why that is and you'll probably have a good understanding where the problems to address are.

Exactly what I was thinking. In Europe (e.g. UK or Germany) people often complain when chip shops or other fried food establishments open below them, because of the constant smells.