Steam powered the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. Oil fueled the Global Economy of the 20th Century. The Digital Age of the 21st Century is clearly being driven by brainpower.

That makes education a key edge in global competition. Yet for all the focus on schools and universities, little attention has been paid to libraries – long a source of learning during and beyond school age years.

Some American cities have been building new landmark library buildings. But there’s been little thought and debate about what goes on inside.

Railroads declined because they failed to realize that carrying goods and people could be done without rails. Newspapers face extinction because they’ve been slow to adapt to the ability to deliver news without paper. Still, American cities continue to view libraries primarily as buildings giving access to books. That’s an expensive business with a dwindling clientele. It’s little wonder public library budgets have been slashed, over the howls from traditional library supporters that this means the end of Western civilization as we know it.

Down under, Australians are taking a more creative approach to harnessing brainpower for local communities in the Digital Age. Given that Australia largely avoided what they call “The Global Economic Crisis,” Americans might pay more attention to their “can do” innovations.

Ross Duncan is the Manager for Learning Communities for the Sunshine Coast Council, just north of Brisbane, Australia’s third largest metropolis. He runs the Sunshine Coast Regional Library system. At a recent local government gathering, he outlined the case for reinventing libraries to perform their core mission — adjusted to the world we live in today. This, of course, means honestly asking, What is the core mission of public libraries? The conventional answer is: providing books. But that confuses means and ends. The historic mission of public libraries, pioneered by Benjamin Franklin, was to provide access to learning (his original Philadelphia library allowed members to check out a microscope and telescope as well as books.)

The vision of the city council and community on the Sunshine Coast is to create “Australia’s most sustainable region, one that is vibrant, green and diverse.” Libraries serve that mission by providing open access to learning and education. Duncan’s philosophy is to infuse the 10 branches of the Sunshine Coast library system with a focus on “changing the world.” He’s shaped what is essentially an informal family university offering more than 4,500 activities, workshops and events that foster a “learning community.”

Duncan illustrates the point with the story of a woman who came on the wrong day for a book signing talk. She attended a composting workshop instead, making two new friends. Together they started a community garden. No books were checked out, but the library provided the connection between learning and doing.

Each Sunshine Coast library is a wireless hotspot. Each offers a kaleidoscope of classes and seminars on everything from worm farming to support groups for parents of autistic children. They collect shoes for children in Africa. They electronically publish local authors — and feature them in display cases and offer their works for sale. The “Circulation Desk” is called “Customer Service” and the Reference Librarian is called an “Information Specialist.”

If Franklin’s library lent out scientific instruments, Duncan goes one better. He pioneered a “book a brain” service that allows members to reserve time with a retired business executive or professor who offers advice for businesses and community groups.

Sunshine Coast doesn’t just have an electronic catalogue, it boasts an online store. By constantly “thinking outside the square,” as Duncan says, they are making libraries “the key community hub to bring the community together, breaking down barriers of age, income and geography.”

Sunshine Coast may not be a learning nirvana, nor is it certain that it’s hit on a cost-effective and universally applicable formula to revitalize libraries. Yet it’s clear that fresh, passionate thinking is needed as American libraries close branches, slash hours and lay off staff, the beginning of a painful and inexorable decline into irrelevance.

We can’t afford to squander the opportunity to drag libraries into the Digital Age, not just with more computer terminals, but with a whole new emphasis on high tech, high touch learning.

In Cerritos, California, a small middle-class Los Angeles suburb, the city expanded their library with dramatic architecture inside and out, including a life size T-Rex in the children’s room and a Vegas-size shark tank in the entry. It’s not these flashy touches that makes it a promising model, however. Leaders there read Joseph Pine and James Gilmore’s prescient book, The Experience Economy. Applying the lessons, they’ve created a vibrant, interactive swirl of attractions that draw all ages to the crowded library with study rooms, violin recitals, hot coffee and, yes, books. The multi-generational family groups that stream in on Saturday morning are indistinguishable from the shoppers at the nearby mall. Except they are coming with the goal of enriching their minds and lives, instead of consumption. Examples from the Sunshine Coast to Cerritos show that libraries can again be an engine of enlightenment, but only if they embrace innovation with the passion they’ve traditionally had for shelving books.

Rick Cole is City Manager of Ventura, Calif.

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The scandal of grossly inflated city council and top manager salaries in Bell, Calif. — and a similar story about its neighbor Vernon, Calif. — has touched a nerve. It’s being used as the poster child for public sector excess and arrogance.

What’s missing from the outrage, though, is a focus on the underlying causes — or the real cost. We’ve always known that unchecked power is prone to abuse, whether in the private or public sector — even in sacred institutions of faith. But why was such blatant abuse allowed to bloom — and why was it so long ignored? Who really pays the price for official corruption? Most urgently of all, what sensible steps should be take to ensure it is not repeated?

Without that, we may see misguided “reforms” duck the specific solutions to the real problem. Corruption is like cancer — it comes in different forms and is best curbed with specific treatments. Arbitrary new rules aimed at “reforming” every city government would be a ridiculous over-reaction. It would only further hamstring the effectiveness of local government at a time when we need more efficiency, not less. The same goes for generic and toothless reforms that simply sound good.

Lots of causes have been pinpointed. There was a genuine failure of essentially all of the gatekeepers of public integrity. The professional managers, meant to be insulated from political corruption, were instead the source of it. The elected officials, meant to keep an eye on the administrators, co-conspired with them so everyone could participate in the plunder. The city attorney, sworn to uphold the law, signed off on its evasion. Local law enforcement was part of the game. The media, the county grand jury, the district attorney and community leaders and residents were asleep at the wheel.

There are specific, clear-cut and fixable causes for the why these gatekeepers failed — and these risk being lost in the babble and finger pointing.

Bell is one of a dozen inner ring suburbs that prospered on Southern California’s great post-war industrial boom. When others think of Los Angeles, the images evoked are beaches, palm trees, freeways and movies, with perhaps some dark urban dystopia thrown in. Forgotten is that beginning with the shipyards of World War II, the vast tract of flat land between the port and downtown became the second largest industrial concentration in the world, behind the bombed-out German Ruhr. Aerospace, tires, steel, cars, industrial tools, electronics and the other booming industries of postwar America provided opportunity and jobs to the children of the Oakies and Arkies that had streamed into California during the Depression.

Fifty years later, the big plants are closed. The white working class has moved up and on. What remains is a landscape of struggling industries and a half million largely immigrant workers in the remaining manufacturing and service industries at the heart of Southern California, divided up into a dozen municipal jurisdictions that are ripe for corruption.

Three adjacent towns illustrate the problem. Vernon is a 2.5 square mile commercial powerhouse of factories and warehouses. It has a population of just 96 residents. There are no houses or apartments to buy or rent — all the residential real estate is occupied by members of the city council or city employees and their families. It is essentially a financial printing press disguised as a municipality. It’s gusher of tax and utility revenue allows it to support a police force of 54 officers for 96 residents, while it’s next door neighbor struggles with just 38 officers for a population of 40,000. Vernon’s tax base allowed it to pay Bruce Malkenhorst Sr. the highest salary for a city manager in California. But it didn’t keep him from stealing at least another $60,000 to pay for personal massages, golf trips and lavish meals, for which he was eventually indicted. Unconvicted, to this day he collects the highest public pension in the state — more than half a million dollars a year.

On the other side of Bell is Maywood, which is virtually bereft of industry or commerce. Thirty thousand people live there. After years of scandal and political wrangling, It recently found itself in such a fiscal hole that it took the unprecedented step of firing its entire workforce, including disbanding its police force. The county sheriffs took over policing the city (and the adjacent community of Cudahy) and City Hall and other municipal functions were turned over to … Bell.

Three cities. All systematically victimized by corruption. But its not the water, its not the dark side of human nature — it’s the artificial boundaries that determine their common fate.

None of the three cities should be organized as a separate city. The only sensible solution is to consolidate them through receivership, probably as part of a larger redrawing of lines of the dozen cities in the area. New borders should reflect today’s economic and demographic realities, not arbitrary lines drawn by real estate speculators a century ago. A half a million low-income residents are systematically short-changed from getting honest, effective local government and the services it provides because they live in a patchwork of artificial “cities” that hamstring effective governance.

Receivership and re-organization are systematic solutions to the problems in Southeast Los Angeles. “Feel good” statewide legislation is just knee-jerk reaction. Yes, posting city salaries on websites is good for every town in California — or America. But it won’t fix the problem in Bell, Vernon, Maywood and the nearby communities. Having the California state legislature turn its attention from passing a budget to establishing formulas for management pay in every California town is problematic — and also won’t solve the problem in Bell, Vernon, Maywood and the nearby communities.

Tip O’Neill famously observed: “All politics is local.” In this case, the problem in Southeast Los Angeles is also local. It is not confined to a single city, but its cure lies in redrawing lines to create cities that make sense. Then the people there can have a shot at ensuring they get the government they deserve — and the shot at the American dream they strive for.

Rick Cole is City Manager of Ventura, Calif.

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Take any great place that people love to visit. You know, those lively tourist haunts from Nantucket to San Francisco. Or those red hot neighborhoods from Seattle’s Capital Hill to Miami Beach’s Art Deco district. Or those healthy downtowns from Portland, Oregon to Chicago, Illinois to Charleston, South Carolina. What do they all have in common?

The mix of uses that gives them life are presently outlawed by zoning in virtually every city and town in all 50 states.

Crisis offers opportunity. With real estate in a freefall, there is an opportunity to lay the foundation for a more prosperous and sustainable American landscape.

If only there is the vision and political will.

Scrapping zoning codes is the single most significant change that can be made in every town and city in America. It would aid economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster healthier lifestyles, reduce dependence on foreign oil, protect open space and wildlife habitats, and reduce wasteful government spending.

Zoning is a legacy of Herbert Hoover. As Commerce Secretary, he championed the “Standard Zoning Enabling Act” to address “the moral and social issues that can only be solved by a new conception of city building.” In 1926, the Supreme Court upheld zoning to protect health and safety by “excluding from residential areas the confusion and danger of fire, contagion and disorder which in greater or less degree attach to the location of store, shops and factories.” The quite sensible idea that people shouldn’t live next to steel mills was used to justify a system of “zones” to isolate uses that had lived in harmony for centuries.

Under zoning, new neighborhoods were segregated by income, and commerce was torn asunder from both customers and workers. Timeless ways of creating great places were ruthlessly outlawed. The sprawl spawned by zoning spread from sea to shining sea.

Almost everyone admits the environmental and social devastation caused by sprawl. Yet it remains the law. What’s been lacking is the tool for producing great places instead of bleak, auto-dependent landscapes. If “zoning” is the DNA of sprawl the coding that endlessly replicates the bleak landscape of autotopia, then what is the DNA of livable communities?

It is found in timeless ways of building, updated for the 21st Century, including the need to accommodate cars. It regulates incompatible uses without the absurdities of conventional zoning. It is calibrated for new buildings to contribute to their context and to the larger goal of making a great place. It does so primarily by regulating the form of buildings, since that is what determines the long-neglected public realm of streets and sidewalks. It does that by regulating setbacks, heights and the physical character of buildings. For example, a form-based code could protect the existing scale of a neighborhood from the “teardowns” of traditional homes for replacement by McMansions–or facilitate the evolution of an auto-oriented commercial strip to a mix of uses, including residential and/or office over retail.

Called “form-based codes” or “smart codes,” this alternative framework for shaping great places exists, and it’s quietly spreading.

Where it’s been tried, it’s been a success. Seaside, Florida, the poster town for “new urbanism,” was “coded” rather than zoned, and ended up on the cover of Time magazine. In 2003, Petaluma, California scrapped its zoning regulations and adopted a new code for 400 underdeveloped acres in their Downtown, producing more than a quarter billion dollars in new investment. Now cities as diverse as Miami, Buffalo, Tulsa and La Jolla are pursuing “form-based codes.”

Unlike zoning, “form-based coding” is not a “one-size fits all” solution. The rules for form in a dense urban center are distinctly different from those for a predominantly residential suburban neighborhood. In each case, the form and character of buildings are “calibrated” to achieve a cohesive and complimentary sense of place.

Still, widespread adoption waits upon the widespread recognition that the time for reform has come. The real estate meltdown provides that wake-up call. The model is broken. Financing generic products (class A office; suburban housing tract; grocery-anchored strip center; business park, etc.) through globally marketable securities has become radioactive. By the time supply and demand right themselves, the financial and economic unsustainability of sprawl will be laid bare.

Of course, one can never underestimate what historian Barbara Tuchman called “the march of folly.” Perhaps in the interest of “stimulus” to the moribund economy, we will be willing to spend trillions more to subsidize sprawl. But in the end, as economist Herbert Stein pointed out, “That which cannot go on forever, won’t.”

Before that day comes, we can save untold environmental, economic and social damage by the widespread adoption of coding that respects human scale, restores the proximity of complimentary uses, and repairs the damage done to the American landscape and our rich (but abandoned) tradition of creating fine neighborhoods, towns and cities.

Scrap zoning. Adopt coding. Legalize the art of making great places that people cherish, that produce economic value, and that leave a lighter environmental footprint on the land.

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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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