'I smell the pine trees and the peaches in the woods.
I see the pinecones that fall by the highway.
That's the highway that goes to the building.
I pick the building that I want to live in.

It's over there, it's over there.
My building has every convenience.
It's gonna make life easy for me.
It's gonna be easy to get things done.
I will relax alone with my loved ones.

Loved ones, loved ones visit the building,
Take the highway, park and come up and see me,
I'll be working, working but if you come visit,
I'll put down what I'm doing, my friends are important.'

Optimism about highways? Well, that was a long time ago. At least he knew the importance of friendship.

Stockholm has even more cyclists, though -- although I imagine the months in which it's safe to ride a bike are pretty limited due to ice/snow conditions. Not a lot of helmet-wearing there either, but definitely more than in Paris.

It plays things backwards, in a way, to make a point; the narrator has been so used to cars, 7-11s, and Pizza Huts that he "can't get used to this lifestyle. Classic David Byrne.

Plus it's catchy.

The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

As he recounts his early life, we're on a train from New York to Washington,
hurtling toward the very patch of ground where he grew up. His boyhood home
no longer exists; it was sacrificed for Interstate 95. "I've tried to find
the woods where I used to play," he says. "But I can never get my bearings.
It's pretty disorienting."

and the City Paper:

When I confess that I was a fellow if somewhat younger Arbutian, I think I see an eyebrow raised in interest. We slip into shorthand geographical references, and it emerges that Byrne watched both of his childhood homes in Arbutus be demolished, one for construction of Interstate 95, the other for a public parking lot.

"You get to watch your house pushed into your own basement," he observes. Was that traumatic? "It does give you a feeling that you have to find your security somewhere other than a house in one place."

I see the parkway that passes through them all.
And I have learned how to look at these things and I say,
I wouldn't live there if you paid me.

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/ta-rides-with-penalosa-david-byrne/