Peñalosa’s infectious call to arms is a common attitude among the planners, designers, and activists at this conference. It’s too bad that I’m the only member of the traditional media who is actively covering the event because both the need for change and the innovative ideas being offered here are truly inspiring. This is Mayor Gavin Newsom’s “best practices” penchant in practice, and he is one who needs to stand tall now if San Francisco is to get beyond baby steps.

Gil Peñalosa at a post-speech press conference.

Peñalosa emphasized that bold executive leadership is crucial to addressing the multi-faceted problem. All of the best cities were transformed by the deliberate efforts of strong leaders in just the last 30 years. He listed five elements for success: “1. Leadership; 2. Political Will (guts); 3. Doers in the Public Sector; 4. Community Engagement; and 5. Sense of Urgency (action).”

Vision is the key, and he said that vision shouldn’t be diluted by the “community engagement” element: “You cannot do change by consensus.” Instead, creating important, lasting change needs to be the all-consuming focus of a visionary leader, one who isn’t afraid to be unpopular or suffer political consequences. He noted that his brother was targeted by an impeachment effort to remove him as mayor of Bogota, and London voters recently ousted Mayor Ken Livingstone, who pioneered congestion pricing and greatly improved transit and bicycling opportunities there.

“There’s always opposition to everything,” Peñalosa said when I asked him about this political downside during a press conference after his presentation. “At the end of the day, you were elected and you need to decide what’s best for the majority of the people.”

And he said the evidence is overwhelming that allowing safe bicycling, easy transit, and walkable communities is what people want and need: “It’s a human right, the right to mobility.” Beyond such moral imperatives, Peñalosa also framed the issue in almost metaphysical terms, saying it isn’t about technical solutions or economic constraints, but simply posing the question, “How do we want to live?”

As he flashed through slides from cities around the world, showing how car-focused urban designs were transformed into invited public spaces, the logic of livable cities seemed clear. “We have learned to survive,” he said, “but now we need to really learn how to live.”

That’s the overarching theme of the conference. Sure, there’s been lots of transportation geekspeak from the professionals here, but the goal of minutiae like LOS reform and street diets is to realize the central goal of “designing communities as communities,” said Randall Ghent of the World Carfee Network, rather than around the task of circulating and storing automobiles. “Let’s make this conference a start for that.”

Introducing the conference’s keynote speakers was another pillar of the movement: Mia Birk, who was Portland’s longtime transportation policy coordinator before opening Alta Planning & Design, the preeminent sustainable transportation design firm in the country, which is working on carfree and car-light projects with hundreds of cities around the world, including some in the Bay Area.

“We’re not anti car, but we’re trying to create a system where walking and biking are viable transportation options,” Birk said, later adding, “You can’t encourage people to bike and walk if you don’t have the infrastructure.”

That often means taking lanes from cars to widen sidewalks and install bikes lanes (which Penalosa and others emphasized should be physically separated from traffic – a rare thing in San Francisco – if you want to encourage more people to use a bike). She said merchants will raise concerns about lost lanes and street parking – as they have in San Francisco around Geary Bus Rapid Transit and other proposed projects – but leaders need to do what’s right for the people, their communities, and the planet.

“What we’re talking about is a true cultural revolution to encourage that kind of shift,” Birk said, noting how difficult it is to overcome 100 years of engrained car culture and inviting the crowd to, “Be a part of that revolution.”

She introduced the first of two keynote speakers, League of American Bicyclists executive director Andy Clarke, who echoed the sentiment that moving toward carfree cities requires education, advocacy, engineering, cultural support, and political will: “It needs to be an all-encompassing effort.”

For example, Clarke said that increasing bicycle use in most cities requires more than just encouragement, but the education, support, and facilities, “to give people the skills and confidence they need to ride in today’s traffic.” And biking is something that builds on itself, with studies showing accident rates drop and the demand for more improvements increase as the number of people bicycling rise.

“The climate is changing,” Clarke said. “This is our time. It’s our moment to seize the opportunity and change our communities.”