The Obama Administration’s poorly conceived and vaguely defined economic stimulus package shows signs of a much-needed fine tuning.

It’s high time, because the announcement that a pot of gold containing up to $1 trillion for “infrastructure projects” has done little but produce the most unimaginative, city-adverse proposals in memory.

Most are heavy on public works projects and light on public sense. It should be little surprise, since when you use terms like “shovel-ready projects,” you’re really asking for the usual suspects to ask for money for the usual projects – more and more lanes of asphalts for roads.

The Real Stimulus

It’s too bad, because the economic stimulus package should have actually stimulated some imaginative thinking by governments across the U.S., but instead, it’s become an inventory of the favorite projects of traffic engineers and public works directors. As our friend Jeff Speck pointed out in his presentation in Memphis last year, the first step in taking back a well-designed, connected and sustainable city is not to leave the quality of life to engineers.

So far, the economic stimulus has been sad news for cities, because at a time when the federal funds should be incentives for investing in the new economy, it’s likely that much of it will be spent chasing the old oil-dependent economy and growth patterns that have hollowed out Memphis and driven Shelby County Government to the brink of bankruptcy.

In other words, it would be the perfect time to invest in a green infrastructure, bike lanes and a technological grid that speaks to the realities of the future. Hopefully, the frustration recently shown by the new federal administration at the lack of imagination by local governments is prompting it to redefine its earlier broad statements so that the stimulus encourages more sustainable and more energy-efficient infrastructure.

The Right Path

After all, it shouldn’t be enough that the federal is aimed at putting to work. More to the point, it needs to be about creating the platform for the essential infrastructure for cities competing in a knowledge-based economy.

The hasty effort by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to put together a compendium of ready-to-go projects resulted in such an emphasis on more sprawl-inducing public works projects that it became the poster child for the missed opportunities of the stimulus package. It was a paragon of pork barrel thinking.

One local television station suggested that Memphis missed the boat by not submitting a list of these kinds of projects to the Conference of Mayors, but to the contrary, we think city and county governments deserve commendation for refusing to fall into the prevailing herd mentality and instead took a more deliberate, more strategic path.

Asking The Right Question

In other words, most governments have treated the stimulus funding as a way to transfer the cost of projects already in the pipeline from their government to the federal government. As a result, the emphasis seems to be on spending money fast rather than spending money smart.

Rather than ask, “How do we spend money as quickly as possible,” cities should be asking, “How do we reinvent the American infrastructure because this one is too expensive, too unsustainable and too uncompetitive?”

Of course, we’ve compounded these problems here by our obsession with paying people to love us in the form of tax freezes, by our lack of vision about workforce improvement and by our missed opportunities to build an economy on quality rather than cheapness.

Park The Pork

We’ve shown no interest in creating the kind of 21st century public transit system that is more and more a backbone for attracting and retaining highly-skilled workers. We’ve failed to develop early childhood interventions and the quality education system that prepare our children to compete in the global economy.

And, as we’ve written before, we’ve placed the financial rewards in our economy on people who can build incomprehensible schemes rather than people who build new technology and real products. Is it asking too much that this economic crisis should be the catalyst for getting our priorities straight?

We begin here by shifting our emphasis from pork projects to projects that increase productivity, inspire research and build a competitive workforce. There was a time when Memphis was known as a cauldron of imagination – both musically and entrepreneurially. We refuse to admit that these bursts of innovation were merely aberration and not an essential part of our local culture and character.

Principled Thinking

Recently, we asked the Sustainable Shelby working team what principles and goals are suggested by the 51 recommendations and 150 strategies of the initiative. Here’s what they said:

Principles:

* Focus on projects that will spur local job growth by awarding contracts to local and minority owned businesses (multiplier effect).

* Focus on projects within areas with under utilized infrastructure in order to promote infill and reduce sprawl.

* Focus and prioritize projects that incorporate sustainable design principles, such as green building retrofits for schools and public buildings or using natural infrastructure in roadway design.

The Standards

Sustainable Stimulus Criteria:

Does the project …..

* reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled.

* promote infill development/discourage sprawl.

* promote alternate modes of transportation (BRT, Light rail, Trolley, Carpool, Carsharing).

* provide infrastructure that encourages biking and walking.

* locate infrastructure improvements near approved substantial infill development projects in an effort to add value to community redevelopment initiatives.

* encourage school and public building retrofits to include energy efficient and green building standards.

Yes, We Can

In the words of the Sustainable Shelby team, “the basic idea is that the projects selected/prioritized for the stimulus money should be those that help to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, revitalize our cities and provide good jobs to local workers.”

If only they had been advising the Obama Administration before it announced the stimulus package. In the end, the election of the president-elect was all about hope and a new era. That’s precisely why we can’t afford for his first major economic stimulus initiative to just be more of the same.