Or come to downtown Vancouver. I live in a small apartment, but within four blocks I have a community centre with gym, a pharmacy, a post office, a grocery store, a small bakery, the best liquor store in the city, three banks, a hot pot restaurant, a physiotherapist/massage therapist office, a vet, a dispensary, multiple hairdressers, an optometrist, several restaurants, two places to get gelato, a public plaza with a weekly farmer's market, a walking/cycling route along the waterfront, a car wash, a sports bar with arcade machines, skeeball, and pinball, an enclosed pollinator meadow, a science museum/IMAX theatre, two separate public "subway" lines (though one is elevated and one is below-grade), and two private but inexpensive water taxi services.

I can leave my house at 6 AM and go get fresh bread or baked goods and go sit by the water, or I can leave the house at 7 AM to get groceries if I'm out of something and be back by 7:10.

American cities don't want this because having a huge empty house with a huge empty yard and having to drive 90 minutes to get to work or 30 minutes to get groceries is the American Dream and no one who's been sold this dream wants to believe that there are so many better and more efficient ways to live.

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 :( )