It's a lot easier to build housing in the middle of nowhere USA; but there's not a large problem of ghost cities. There's certainly a lot of sprawl, but not large new construction ghost cities; although there was some overbuilding in some areas into the 2008 housing crash, and some areas where construction stalled or stopped mid-build as a result, since either the builder could no longer finance finishing or it didn't make economic sense to do so at that time. China has a lot of disconnected incentives that help it make economic sense for the participants to build and buy into a ghost city that I don't think are present in the US and Canada.
If ghost cities are a real concern, you could punitively tax vacant housing that's not offered for lease or sale, and limit housing starts when housing offered for sale or lease was above some threshold price. Or you could do something like a deposit per housing start, paid back over time to the owner or occupant while occupied.