Vancouver is more expensive than Boston, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Chicago (actually, more expensive than any US city except New York).. It's certainly possible to live in those areas with public transportation, local parks, schools, and supermarkets. But you've got to be rich or live in the crappy part of town.
If you make it desirable to live there, you're going to drive prices up to the point where only the well-to-do can afford it. But the well-to-do aren't going to mow the lawns, clean the toilets, haul the garbage, or teach the kids. So you end up forcing the people that will do those jobs out to the suburbs. .
The result is places like San Francisco that can't hire teachers, because they can't afford to live near their schools. And since they can't get good teachers, the families with kids are fleeing to the suburbs. Or Washington, D.C., which is on the verge of not being a majority-black city because gentrification is driving up property values. They've had to abandon residency requirements for municipal employees because they couldn't fill vacancies anymore, so even trying to force people to live in cities doesn't work.
People are willing to accept a certain degree of misery in their daily commute in exchange for larger homes, bigger yards, better schools, and less crime. If someone is already willing to live with a 2-hour commute each way, there's not much you can do to punish him further.