Canada is a lot like Australia in that they were both founded and developed about the same time as the U.S. (newer, huge countries formerly part of the Commonwealth) but the difference in the U.S. is that we were dominated so long by auto manufacturers and oil companies and that drove the ridiculous highway building and sprawl and the simultaneous crushing of the existing public transportation infrastructure.

Both those countries have far fewer people in bigger geography, but their cities are dense have have amazing mass transit that almost everybody uses.

In the U.S., we completely sold our soul to a few massive corporations to drive a short-term economic engine and now we are paying a huge huge price and will be for many generations to come.