Everyone wants space. The first thing people do all over the world when they get more affluent is get a bigger house. The North American Dream includes one's own, large house in the suburbs, not a cramped condo.

Immigrants want to leave their congested megacities where people are crammed together in high rises to come to the wide open spaces of the US and Canada, and the first thing on their agenda is to save enough to buy a house. 

Only a small coterie of hipsters are interested in cramming themselves into small urban apartments, and even they often outgrow it when they have kids.