At least that's the impression we drew from the new Salt Lake City mayor's State of the City speech. Like his six-minute inaugural remarks a week earlier, this address was mercifully short, a mere 20 minutes. But Becker laid down a fairly solid impression of where he wants to take the capital city, and how.

Again, he emphasized collaborative government and consensus-building, announcing a process he calls Salt Lake Solutions to foster a community conversation about what to do and how to do it. He named a steering committee of a dozen community heavy hitters to help him.

Becker also announced an "information-driven budget and management program" for city government that he calls CityWorks. He said that it will ensure that city government is "responsible, accountable and cost-effective."

Sometimes initiatives like these turn out to be nothing more than buzzwords. We'll withhold judgment until we see results. But the mayor deserves applause for bringing leaders of the business, academic, charitable and environmental communities into the mix to help shape policies.

That, in turn, should make those policies easier to implement, whether it be financing for a new public safety building or a downtown cultural district anchored by a new theater for touring Broadway shows, creating a downtown parking authority, improving the Jordan Parkway, designating more bikeways or filling the need for affordable housing.

Becker mentioned all of those projects. Being that he is an urban planner, he drew particular attention to leading the city's troubled planning department out of the wilderness and stepping up the pace for building bikeways, trails and mass transit, including the Airport TRAX line. He singled out a city-owned Victorian home, the Fisher Mansion, on the banks of the Jordan River as a restoration project. It will be a test of his collaborative process, and perhaps it was intended as a signal that he will pay attention to the city's west side.

Like Rocky Anderson before him, he will stress collaboration with the city's school district on education, and he will focus on air quality and environmental sustainability.

We like both his priorities and his playbook.