This edition of SFR’s annual “Local Economy” issue contains fewer exhortations to buy local produce (still important!) or patronize local coffee shops. Instead, we asked several business and community leaders a single question: What’s one thing that Santa Fe can do to improve its own economy? In asking this question, we hope to start a meaningful conversation about economic development in Santa Fe. We also hope to provide a road map for public officials and community leaders so that they can contact these people, refine their ideas and make them happen. As long as a national economic recovery lurks elusively beyond our adobe walls, we may as well create our own way forward.

The plan: Create community workspaces where young artists can live and work, then run those in conjunction with pop-up shops or galleries, where these artists can sell their work and hold events.

The plan: Create a “cultural corridor” linking Santa Fe to Albuquerque and Taos, and encourage collaborative efforts to preserve, expand and market each area’s unique culture.

The plan: Brackley offers two ideas on how to pump life back into Santa Fe’s stagnant economy: simplifying the land use code and investing more money in marketing.

The plan: Match young entrepreneurs and artists with empty retail spaces to create more vibrant, mixed-use spaces around Santa Fe.

The plan: Despite the incubator’s success, however, shifting Santa Fe’s economy away from heavy reliance on its usual industries will take much more than one entity’s well-intentioned efforts.

The plan: Start a meaningful conversation about Santa Fe’s future economy by organizing and engaging small, diverse groups of local residents. Schnieders says the groups would first address the question of what Santa Feans consider the key issues; the question of what changes are necessary would come later.

The plan: Teach Santa Fe students about the growing industry of biofuels.

The plan: Encourage a local, home-based economy based on the strategies pioneered by Live Work New Mexico.

The plan: Bring down the state’s sky-high liquor license prices by making more licenses available or by making existing licenses harder to lose.