Citiwire.net

For Release Sunday, November 23, 2008
Citiwire.net

In his first press conference as president-elect, Barack Obama acknowledged, “Some of the choices that we make are going to be difficult…it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole that we are in.”

In this crisis, the “change we need” is to invest in a sustainable economy for our future, rather than borrowing to sustain our current economy. Here’s how the new Administration can help us dig out of the hole we’re in:

• Green business. In his new global survey of America’s peril and potential, Hot, Flat and Crowded, Thomas Friedman calls “green” the “new red white and blue.” Obama has pledged to create “green jobs” through alternative energy. But in the decade ahead, every single job in the American economy will need to go “green,” by ruthless pursuit of less waste and more sustainable and productive business practices. For the private sector to succeed, federal policies on taxes, regulations, research, purchasing and grant-making must all be reformed to promote green practices, rather than stifle them.

• Smart Growth. The suburban, auto-dominated landscape of the past 50 years won’t work for a post-peak oil, post-carbon America. Alternate fuels aren’t enough, nor is transit compatible with sprawl. The Congress for the New Urbanism, headed by former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, has revived traditional town and city building to emphasize mixed-use, transit-oriented design at every scale of development from neighborhood to metropolis. Rep. Earl Blumenauer from Portland, Oregon has emerged as the leading national leader for this movement, rapidly being adopted by cities and states across America.

• Regionalism. In a June speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Obama identified metro regions as the engines of global growth. Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Portland, Chattanooga and St. Louis have emerged as models for metro/suburban collaboration. Obama also embraced the social equity dimension of regionalism, to ensure inner cities will benefit from collaborative efforts to improve education, reinvest in older communities and create globally competitive high-wage, high-value jobs.

• Transportation. In 1991, Senator Pat Moynihan spearheaded the landmark ISTEA transportation law. But instead of matching the investment by other advanced economies in high-speed rail and public transit, the Clinton administration let highway expansion continue to dominate federal spending. The Bush Administration failed to even keep up on infrastructure maintenance, so that sprawl continues to fuel oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The new administration will need to start where ISTEA left off to rebuild our goods–and people-moving capacity on an environmentally and economically sustainable model.

• Human capital. Education is the key to restoring American competitiveness. Mayors around the country have emulated Chicago’s Richard Daley’s drive to rebuild inner city schools to restore America’s great cities as engines of new wealth creation, rather than gentrified havens for young professionals amongst crime-ridden slums. We need a national commitment to human capital to reduce the underclass, assimilate immigrants, and provide the workforce that can outperform the hard-working offshore workforce in the economy of the future.

• Innovation. Obama’s popularity in Silicon Valley mirrors his embrace of venture capital investment in American jobs. The Japanese failed to shake off their decade-long slump because they remained tied to “pork barrel” public works stimulation of their economy. Harnessing private investment and entrepreneurship to rebuild America’s cities, older suburbs and essential infrastructure is essential not only to economic success, but to political success as well. Let’s take the huge brainpower and speculative investment that’s been devoted to financing consumer debt and redeploy it to rebuild America’s cities and productive economy.

• New Orleans. Of all George Bush’s failures, the cruelest was his empty promise to rebuild New Orleans. The most hopeful counter-point to those wasted years would be to use the New Orleans region as a model for a green economy that puts people back to work in jobs that create wealth instead of consuming it. Instead of the default choice of tourism, gambling, and decay, New Orleans should rebuild around enterprise and trade, with first-class schools and a sustainable infrastructure.

Reshaping of the American landscape and economy won’t be easy. “Change we can believe in” must look beyond Washington and its stale wedge issues. It must harness local movements, as well as mayors, council members, governors and state legislators, advancing innovative new models throughout our federalist system. Obama carries the unique advantage of having been a community organizer and a state legislator. He can be the model and the inspiration for a broad-based movement for change.

The new administration will be a time of harsh testing, for Washington and for the country. Our nation is too geographically diverse, our economy too gargantuan, for Washington to chart a single course. But investing in sustainability instead of spending on consumption could have a profound impact on the shape of American metropolitan regions and the communities they contain. That’s “the change we need.”

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