Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 18, 1993 TAG: 9304200389
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
REGIONAL STRATEGY
SPRING IS ushering in a season of plans.When the Roanoke Valley Business Council announced last week that it would underwrite the crafting of a regional economic strategy, it joined a trend.
Last month, Roanoke City Council began efforts to update the city's comprehensive plan, strategic goals and "mission statement."
A couple of weeks ago, the Virginia Economic Summit, sponsored by the state chamber of commerce, received a study calling on Virginia to adopt a long-term economic development plan.
Similar efforts are sprouting all over the place.
So what are we witnessing here? Budding socialism? An outbreak of Soviet-style five-year plans?
Not likely. Not in Virginia. Indeed, a lot of the impetus for the forward-thinking, and some of the strategic-planning techniques, are coming from capitalists. From the business community.
I think the future is simply attracting more attention nowadays, a development as welcome and overdue as the warm weather.
Economic uncertainty focuses minds wonderfully. We sense the jobs-base shifting beneath us. We're coming to understand that not just a new season in the business cycle has arrived, but more fundamental change, impelled by exposure to global markets.
It's dawning on us that we must find new sources of prosperity and leadership to replace the old ones. And a future accomplished is preferable to a fate imposed.
As Roanoke's chief of community planning John Marlles puts it: Plan now or pay later.
I'm not one to exaggerate planning's usefulness, especially when plans so often are ignored. But the effort to set priorities and goals - to figure out where, as communities, we are going; where we want to go; how we might get there - seems to me an essential endeavor.
The thing is, good planning is hard to do. You don't just throw out ideas and expect them to come up roses. From a variety of sources, including local experience, I've gleaned a few rules of thumb:
Get the best and most compatible help available, and don't rely completely on it. Remember, during the ill-fated campaign to merge local governments, when the Roanoke Valley Business Council commissioned a consultant's study of consolidation's benefits? The report proved a bad joke, rife with errors.
The business council and its partners are proposing now to hire a facilitator to help the region develop an economic vision and strategy. It's a great idea, but the facilitator must be chosen with great care. And make sure local people, familiar with local nuances, help shape and retain ownership of the process.
Prepare for the long haul. The best results can't be accomplished with one town-hall meeting or a listing of regional goals. The process is difficult. Consensus-growing takes time. There are no shortcuts.
Once a regional strategy is developed, and support garnered, it has to be implemented. Then implementation must be monitored, and the plan continuously revised. What the business council proposes is only the seed of the enterprise.
Insist on broad and meaningful community input. Consider the city of Roanoke's comprehensive development plan, "Roanoke Vision," which City Council is updating this year. It was put together in 1985 with major public input - including neighborhood workshops and a forum attended by some 200 community leaders. It came off without much controversy.
Contrast that with "Focus '89," a downtown plan without much citizen participation. Among the projects it covered were Dominion Tower, the demise of the Hunter Viaduct and the widening of Wells Avenue. These probably would have been controversial anyway, but inadequate public input in the planning didn't help.
Get elected officials on board. Politicians are prone to react to the political pressure of the moment, without reference to organized priority-setting. Their timeframes often don't reach much beyond the next election. But this is all the more reason to include them in the planning. Their lack of support can be harmful, and they happen to represent voters.
While Roanoke's 1989 design process failed to enlist public support, the '85 plan came up short by failing to win elected officials' commitment. Partly as a result, although the comprehensive plan is good on paper, City Council hasn't paid enough attention to it. It's encouraging, therefore, that the current council is taking the lead in updating "Roanoke Vision." And it would be a mistake to present a business council's finished regional plan to elected officials without their signature on it - and expect them to implement the thing.
Hurdle boundaries and barriers. Some 35 city officials attended a daylong workshop last month to begin updating the city plan. It was an achievement simply to join in one room the council members and representatives from Roanoke's planning commission, the School Board and administration, the redevelopment and housing authority, and city staff.
Even more exciting is the fact that the regional-strategy effort initiated by the business council is pulling together not only the Roanoke Valley's disparate business groups, but also New River economic-development officials and Virginia Tech. For the first time, there's prospect of a regional vision to match the regional economy.
Recognize the influence of old paradigms, and look beyond them. Paradigms are patterns of experience that regulate our sense of reality. Doubtless some people will view the regional-strategy initiative as another conspiracy by Roanoke's downtown elite to impose a fancy, high-cost agenda. Son of Consolidation, if you will. To avoid lending credence to the paranoid paradigm, leaders of the project must conduct it in the open. They need to show patience.
But they also need to muster imagination and boldness, and tap the supplies of both lying fallow in the community. Just as spring isn't spring without a little madness, this exercise is pointless without a stretch.
Glen Hiemstra, a futurist who spoke to the business council Friday, tells of a religious order's members who gathered at the Court of the Elms in Seville, Spain, on July 8, 1401. They took this solemn vow: "Let us build a church so great that those who come after us will think us mad for having attempted it."