Enrique Peñalosa: 'A City is a Means to a Way of Life'

When he was mayor of Bogotá, Colombia Enrique Peñalosa transformed his city of 7 million from a traffic-choked disaster to a model of sustainable development and progressive urban planning. At last October's Manhattan Transportation Policy Conference convened by Borough President Scott Stringer, people from every neighborhood in Manhattan gathered to discuss a vision for the future of transportation in New York. In his keynote address, captured in this latest episode of StreetFilms, Peñalosa made it clear that the conference -- and Bogotá's transformation -- was about much more than just transportation. He said:

"I'm often asked to talk people in cities about transport. I say, I cannot talk about transport unless we have an idea of what type of a city we want. Before we have a vision of what type of city we want, we have to know, how do we want to live. Because really, a city is only a means to a way of life. So actually, whenever we start talking about transport, we really end up discussing how we want to organize our daily life."