In Defence of Suburbs and Low-Density Living

Commentary

As yet another Canadian city buckles to pressure from residents and rejects the densification of its single-family neighbourhoods, we would do well to consider the valid reasons why so many Canadians remain attached to suburbia.

After a marathon two-week public hearing, Calgary city council voted 12-3 on April 8th to repeal a 2024 mass rezoning that greenlit multiplexes and rowhouses in single-family neighbourhoods. Over 300,000 parcels are now back to their previous low-density designation.

The original move to rezone the city for more density had drawn fire from critics over concerns around parking, infrastructure strain, and loss of community character.

These concerns have been at play in battles over densification in communities across the country. In B.C., provincial density legislation is encountering fierce resistance from mayors, while in Toronto, the city government scrapped a plan last year that would have allowed for sixplexes across the city.

The fundamental issue complicating this country’s density debate is that most of the Canadian public has simply not been persuaded out of their attachment to low-density life.

An October 2023 poll by Pollara Strategic Insights found 60 percent of Canadian respondents were theoretically in favour of increasing density, but only 20 percent said it would be a “good thing” if a single-family home on their street was actually turned into a triplex.

Even after decades of lowered expectations brought on by Canada’s housing crisis, a 2025 survey by real estate agency Wahi revealed that 61 percent of Canadians still say they would buy a single-family home over a condo or apartment if they were in the market for a house.

Similarly, a 2024 Wahi survey found that an overwhelming majority of Canadians, 66 percent, prefer to live in low-density environments, with 38 percent opting for the suburbs and 28 percent opting for rural life. Just 34 percent said they would prefer to live in an urban area.

These preferences run up against the ideology informing much of Canada’s pro-density activism and legislation: YIMBYism, which stands for “Yes In My Backyard.” This movement seeks to end what it calls “exclusionary zoning”—neighbourhoods intentionally kept low-density through tight zoning rules.

But, as it turns out, the large chunk of Canadians who remain attached to suburbia are onto something. A significant body of research attests to the benefits of low-density living.

A June 2019 paper in Cities, a longstanding urban planning journal, explodes several myths about suburbs.

Using data from the annual American Time Use Survey, the paper dispels the common critique that suburbs are dull places with few activities. In fact, the data reveals that “demographically similar city residents and suburbanites engage in a very similar amount and composition of out-of-home activities.”

The paper further argues against the notion that suburban life is significantly less convenient than city life, finding that the “ratio of travel time to activity time is similar for demographically similar city residents and suburbanites.”

Notably, the paper finds a “modestly but measurably higher” degree of “subjective well-being” in the suburbs versus urban areas when comparing demographically similar people. This is measured by happiness, sense of meaning, and overall life satisfaction.

This same finding has been replicated outside North America.

A July 2024 paper in the journal Science Advances analyzed a sample of 156,000 British adults, finding that “urban living is associated with lower scores across seven dimensions of well-being, social satisfaction, and economic satisfaction.”

In particular, the authors find “the lowest average family and friendship satisfactions, as well as the highest loneliness, near city centres.” While urbanites “have the highest incomes,” the data indicates “no parallel psychological advantages.”

In fact, this high rate of unhappiness in cities is a consistent research finding. A November 2021 paper in the journal Cities, bluntly titled “Urban unhappiness is common,” analyzes data from the World Values Survey stretching from 1981 to 2020, concluding that “city unhappiness is common across the world.”

Thus the large share of the Canadian population with warm feelings towards low-density, suburban life are expressing a feeling well documented in research—a lot of people derive psychological benefits from that kind of environment.

Conversely, some people love city life. This is an equally legitimate subjective preference.

The 2024 Science Advances paper that found worse psychological outcomes in cities also acknowledged the economic and cultural benefits of urban environments: “Bringing people, companies, ideas, and technology in physical proximity generates synergies and with that tremendous wealth, innovation, creativity, and knowledge.”

The ongoing pushback across Canada against efforts to densify suburbs is simply an opposition to the preferences of city dwellers being imposed on suburbanites. Many people who put down roots well away from a city centre resent zoning changes which effectively move high-density city living right into their neighbourhood by greenlighting multiplexes or apartment buildings.

The value in the three categories of urban, suburban, and rural Canada is in their distinctness from one another. Contrary to the worldview of some pro-density activists, erecting zoning barriers between these categories is not “exclusionary.” Rather, these barriers preserve a healthy mix of different kinds of neighbourhoods.

Suburbanites commute to the city for work and visit it to shop, while city dwellers visit suburbs to trick or treat—and often, move there permanently if they need to buy a single-family home for a growing family. Everyone visits rural Canada for fishing, hunting, corn mazes, and pumpkin patches—and many move there permanently to escape the rat race.

Using zoning to keep these three zones distinct is not “exclusionary”—it is common sense.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.