former arts advocate,

trained in architecture and art history,

and I want to talk to you today not about design

but about America

and how America can be more economically resilient,

how America can be healthier,

and how America can be

more environmentally sustainable.

And I realize this is a global forum,

but I think I need to talk about America

because there is a history,

in some places, not all,

of American ideas being appropriated,

being emulated, for better or for worse,

around the world.

And the worst idea we've ever had

is suburban sprawl.

It's being emulated in many places as we speak.

By suburban sprawl, I refer to the reorganization

of the landscape and the creation of the landscape

around the requirement of automobile use,

and that the automobile that was once an instrument of freedom

has become a gas-belching,

time-wasting and life-threatening

prosthetic device

that many of us need just to,

most Americans, in fact, need,

just to live their daily lives.

And there's an alternative.

You know, we say, half the world is living in cities.

Well, in America, that living in cities,

for many of them, they're living in cities still

where they're dependent on that automobile.

And what I work for, and to do,

is to make our cities more walkable.

But I can't give design arguments for that

that will have as much impact

as the arguments that I've learned

from the economists, the epidemiologists

and the environmentalists.

So these are the three arguments that I'm going

to give you quickly today.

When I was growing up in the '70s,

the typical American spent one tenth of their income,

American family, on transportation.

Since then, we've doubled the number of roads

in America, and we now spend one fifth

of our income on transportation.

Working families, which are defined as

earning between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars

a year in America

are spending more now on transportation

than on housing, slightly more,

because of this phenomenon called "drive till you qualify,"

finding homes further and further and further

from the city centers and from their jobs,

so that they're locked in this, two, three hours,

four hours a day of commuting.

And these are the neighborhoods, for example,

in the Central Valley of California

that weren't hurt when the housing bubble burst

and when the price of gas went up;

they were decimated.

And in fact, these are many

of the half-vacant communities that you see today.

Imagine putting everything you have into your mortgage,

it goes underwater, and you have to pay

twice as much for all the driving that you're doing.

So we know what it's done to our society

and all the extra work we have to do

to support our cars.

What happens when a city decides

it's going to set other priorities?

And probably the best example we have here

in America is Portland, Oregon.

Portland made a bunch of decisions in the 1970s

that began to distinguish it

from almost every other American city.

While most other cities were growing

an undifferentiated spare tire of sprawl,

they instituted an urban growth boundary.

While most cities were reaming out their roads,

removing parallel parking and trees

in order to flow more traffic,

they instituted a skinny streets program.

And while most cities were investing in more roads

and more highways, they actually invested

in bicycling and in walking.

And they spent 60 million dollars on bike facilities,

which seems like a lot of money,

but it was spent over about 30 years,

so two million dollars a year -- not that much --

and half the price of the one cloverleaf

that they decided to rebuild in that city.

These changes and others like them changed

the way that Portlanders live,

and their vehicle-miles traveled per day,

the amount that each person drives,

actually peaked in 1996,

has been dropping ever since,

and they now drive 20 percent less

than the rest of the country.

The typical Portland citizen drives

four miles less, and 11 minutes less per day

than they did before.

The economist Joe Cortright did the math

and he found out that those four miles

plus those 11 minutes

adds up to fully three and a half percent

of all income earned in the region.

So if they're not spending that money on driving --

and by the way, 85 percent of the money

we spend on driving leaves the local economy --

if they're not spending that money on driving,

what are they spending it on?

Well, Portland is reputed to have

the most roof racks per capita,

the most independent bookstores per capita,

the most strip clubs per capita.

These are all exaggerations, slight exaggerations

of a fundamental truth, which is Portlanders

spend a lot more on recreation of all kinds

than the rest of America.

Actually, Oregonians spend more on alcohol

than most other states,

which may be a good thing or a bad thing,

but it makes you glad they're driving less.

(Laughter)

But actually, they're spending most of it in their homes,

and home investment is about as local

an investment as you can get.

But there's a whole other Portland story,

which isn't part of this calculus,

which is that young, educated people

have been moving to Portland in droves,

so that between the last two censuses,

they had a 50-percent increase

in college-educated millennials,

which is five times what you saw anywhere else

in the country, or, I should say, of the national average.

So on the one hand, a city saves money for its residents

by being more walkable and more bikeable,

but on the other hand, it also is the cool kind of city

that people want to be in these days.

So the best economic strategy

you can have as a city

is not the old way of trying to attract corporations

and trying to have a biotech cluster

or a medical cluster,

or an aerospace cluster,

but to become a place where people want to be.

And millennials, certainly, these engines of entrepreneurship,

64 percent of whom decide first

where they want to live,

then they move there, then they look for a job,

they will come to your city.

The health argument is a scary one,

and you've probably heard part of this argument before.

Again, back in the '70s, a lot's changed since then,

back in the '70s, one in 10 Americans was obese.

Now one out of three Americans is obese,

and a second third of the population is overweight.

Twenty-five percent of young men

and 40 percent of young women are too heavy

to enlist in our own military forces.

According to the Center for Disease Control,

fully one third of all children born after 2000

will get diabetes.

We have the first generation of children in America

who are predicted to live shorter lives than their parents.

I believe that this American healthcare crisis

that we've all heard about

is an urban design crisis,

and that the design of our cities lies at the cure.

Because we've talked a long time about diet,

and we know that diet impacts weight,

and weight of course impacts health.