Chicago and NYC are probably the two places this critique does not apply to. Take Houston, LA, etc. that are all around the same size, and you'll find a significantly different makeup of housing stock.
Take where I live - Seattle - and the criticism makes a lot more sense. I live in a neighborhood about two blocks from a light rail stop and still walk by single family homes on relatively large plots on my walk from door to door. In nearly any direction, you are within a block or two of what one would say looks like a suburban single family home. There is the concept of "urban villages" which are small pockets of multi-family housing surrounded by low density housing.
I have a strong conviction that the reason Montreal housing is cheaper is in no small part because of the language barrier. Even if you could work remotely, why would you move somewhere you don't speak the primary language, surrounded by people that are somewhat hostile? It's a much smaller market.
Most countries have language skills requirements for immigrants though, and language isn't an intrinsic part of a person but can be learned, so language skills requirements certainly aren't racist.
Canada is so heavily reliant on immigration that what's classified as barely passing English is enough to move to the suburbs of Vancouver and Toronto. There would be so much backlash in Vancouver if a bill like Quebec's Bill 96 passed to prevent first generation Hindi or Mandarin speakers from communicating to their doctors in anything but English. Quebec's actions are racist. They literally try to exit Canada with every federal election
Health services are not really affected by loi 96 and mandarin speakers have no issue talking to their doctors in my experience (specifically living with a mandarin speaker in Montreal in the past, with whom I'm still in contact).
However, doctors now have to be able to communicate in French and English along with any other language they wish.
Independence sentiment in a province annexed through war, even if it was long ago, and that has kept a different identity, has very little too do with racism it seems to me.
As someone who lived in Canada but isn't Canadian, there is so much disinformation regarding Québec in the rest of Canada, and not uncommonly outright hate, that the often heard claims of racism are very ironic.
> I live in a neighborhood about two blocks from a light rail stop and still walk by single family homes on relatively large plots on my walk from door to door. In nearly any direction, you are within a block or two of what one would say looks like a suburban single family home.
I live in Chicago, in a three floor walkup three blocks from an El station, and walk by dozens of single family homes on the way there. There are single-family homes everywhere, it's very difficult not to be within 100 feet of one.
Are single-family homes the enemy? I think they're nice.
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edit: Houston and LA are notably strange places. I'd add Nashville into that, which turns into what seems like Russian doll-nested suburbs right after you leave downtown.
Houston is what gets held up by house-building anti-zoning advocates as a model, though, for some reason. To me, it's always been a hellhole, but I haven't visited for years.
Also doesn't apply to Boston, Philly, and perhaps some smaller cities in New Jersey etc..
The author is Canadian and it seems like he's taking a lot of his perspective from Toronto, which is actually kind of bizarre in that it has clusters of high rises with single family homes in between, and leafy suburban neighborhoods right around downtown.
Toronto’s core urban density is lower than Montreal’s. Am referring to the densest neighbourhoods like Plateau. Often I go to Toronto and find I am the only one walking down many streets, which does not happen often in Montreal or NYC
It's entirely unreasonable to expect cities to look like some perfect gradient of density like something out of Cities Skylines; you'd expect the central desirable areas to be the most dense, and pockets of density here and there, but you'd still find single family homes even in dense areas for quite awhile. Paris didn't become as dense as it is overnight, and even there you can find relatively low-density housing quite close to the CBD.
The question I'd have is how close is a non single-family dwelling (exclude duplexes, too) - I'm in a relatively low density ruralish town, and there's an apartment building a block away on one side, and three on another.
Take where I live - Seattle - and the criticism makes a lot more sense. I live in a neighborhood about two blocks from a light rail stop and still walk by single family homes on relatively large plots on my walk from door to door. In nearly any direction, you are within a block or two of what one would say looks like a suburban single family home. There is the concept of "urban villages" which are small pockets of multi-family housing surrounded by low density housing.
I have a strong conviction that the reason Montreal housing is cheaper is in no small part because of the language barrier. Even if you could work remotely, why would you move somewhere you don't speak the primary language, surrounded by people that are somewhat hostile? It's a much smaller market.