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Ottawa is pretty, but the historic areas are not awfully extensive. The downtown, Sandy Hill, Glebe, Old Ottawa South, Chinatown and Little Italy, have most of the older brick multi-storey housing; further west (Wellington West) you'd find older multi-storey wood homes and some brick. There are some nice neighbourhoods with a lot of Craftsman era houses around Dow's Lake.
Other than that, you go further out, and you find large bungalow neighbourhoods (Nepean in the west, Alta Vista in the east) then go further out of the city and you get to the real suburban sprawl (Kanata, Barrhaven). Many commuters in Ottawa live quite distant from the city in new subdivisions popping up in what used to be little rural towns (Stittsville, Russell, Embrun, Manotick, Richmond).
Ottawa sprawls. It makes the core of the city far less dense or busy than you would expect of a city with a population of about 1 million... by East Coast standards, anyway.* I suppose you could compare its growth and development to cities out west... same sprawl and newness, but with a more Midwestern cultural feel. The proximity to Quebec gives it a bit of an interesting cultural twist, though. We get the benefit of having national-scale amenities in town too--the National Gallery, the National Arts Centre, etc.
*Editing to add: lots of new condo buildings have been built in the last 10-15 years, with many more planned in Lebreton Flats and elsewhere... so density is increasing gradually.
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