Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, in her inaugural address this week, continued the long political tradition of getting the platitudes right – “Baltimore: A Great Place to Grow” was the theme of her speech – but gave few specifics about how she plans to reverse five decades of shrinking population and attract 10,000 new families to the city.

Social problems and crime are difficult nuts to crack, but physical solutions shouldn’t be. That’s exactly what government is supposed to do.

Here’s what could be done to grow Baltimore. Most of the proposals below would cost the government and taxpayer very little. Some would actually add money to the city’s coffers. Others would, once and for all, rid the city of prior bad decisions that continue to haunt its neighborhoods and hurt its economic competitiveness:

• Tax those vacant houses – Put a fire under everyone sitting on underutilized property to bring it into productive use, starting with our plague of vacant houses.

• Open the door to school choice – Political boundaries and zones shouldn’t block the schoolhouse door. Give parents the power to match their responsibility.

• Stop special development deals – All they are is time-consuming, tax-eating red tape benefiting the 1%. End PILOTs that hand developers tax breaks that often stretch out for decades.

• Reform infrastructure financing – TIFs (tax increment financing) should be used only where infrastructure is really necessary to support the development. No more expensive trophy projects.

• Focus on the streets – They are where we perceive the city. Get heavy traffic off local streets and free them up for as much real urban-oriented activity (walking, biking, window-shopping) as possible. Avoid superblocks and fortress developments.

• Fix local transit – Put a fire under the MTA to tear down its happenstance bus system. Convert it into logical community-based short routes, efficient express routes and transit hubs to connect them. No more convoluted routes from Sandtown to Fort McHenry. No more endless slogs from UMBC to White Marsh.

• Expand regional transit – MARC is a huge success story to be nurtured and expanded because it sells Baltimore to the larger region and to affluent Washingtonians. Light- and heavy-rail from downtown to Owings Mills, Hunt Valley and Glen Burnie is a flop because the suburbs are now irrevocably oriented to the Beltway and beyond, not to the city.

• No more diversionary downtown gimmicks – Like 175 mph street race cars. Like Disneyfication of the Inner Harbor.

• Tear down the Franklin-Mulberry expressway – Despite having no functional purpose, the “highway to nowhere” continues to cut like a dagger through West Baltimore.

• Treasure our priceless architectural and historical heritage – It’s what defines our identity and distinguishes Baltimore from the cookie-cutter suburbs.

Gerald Neily was a transportation planner at the Baltimore Department of Planning for 19 years. Since 2005, he has written Baltimore InnerSpace, which was named “Best Urban Planning Blog” of 2008 by Baltimore City Paper.