His point is that our highly dispersed environment is largely of our own making. Particularly low density suburbs, where you have to drive to get milk and eggs, you have to drive to go to school, you have to drive to work. Literally nowhere to walk - if you're relatively wealthy, you might have a neighborhood pool and tennis courts.

There's no good reason these suburbs can't be more walkable, it's mostly adding sidewalks that link to other places. And possibly smaller schools (and the 4000+ pupil high schools we get are a whole different problem).