There's one thing I've noticed with all the Canadian cities I have lived in or visited. Everyone wants to live downtown. Real estate developers want to build as close to the downtown as possible and I suspect lobby town councils to let them build more condos/apartments.

I think this is probably also the case in many larger US cities, where there's perceived to be a lot of exciting things happening downtown. But it's a newer phenomenon in smaller cities like Des Moines. There is some movement to the downtown area, but there's no local grocery store, much of the shopping is in the malls in the suburbs and so on. So for many people, it's a bit of a lifestyle stretch... though it may happen someday.