Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993 TAG: 9305030005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Yet they said economic growth - which generally means population growth, too - is too slow.
It's a paradox not uncommon in mountain cities, according to John Alexander Williams, director of the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.
He said the people in such places often want economic growth that doesn't threaten quality-of-life amenities, but sometimes it's the amenities that cause the growth and can be hurt by it.
"That's the razor's edge," Williams said.
He mentioned an example in Asheville, N.C., a city known in part for its attractive mountain setting. When officials built a freeway to relieve growing traffic congestion - congestion caused in part by visitors attracted to the mountains - they made room for it by blasting away part of one of the mountains people had come to see.
"It's like you took a bread knife and cut off half the loaf," Williams said. "There's no other word for it. It's just ugly."
The sides in growth/no-growth debates often are defined in part by the opponents' origins. Those who want to pull up the drawbridge tend not to be the natives.
"Some come here for the environment and become real protective and would like to see it slow down," said Bob Shepherd of the Land of the Sky Regional Council in Asheville.
Natives, on the other hand, generally are more disposed toward development projects.
That may surprise those who are steeped in the Appalachian stereotypes of suspiciousness of change. While real, experts say, the suspiciousness was not natural. Instead, it was forced upon Appalachians by years of exploitation at the hands of outsiders bent on profiting from the region's natural resources.
Anthropologist Susan Keefe of Appalachian State said it's not as though natives will blindly support any project that promises jobs.
"They want economic development that allows their people to prosper," she said. "They want a place where their children will be able to stay and thrive."
Keefe said concern for long-term family well-being is fairly typical of mountain people, including those who live in cities. But she and other experts warn against Appalachian stereotypes of any kind.
Despite the lingering if misguided perceptions of some flatlanders - and some city folks within Appalachia itself - few mountain people dress like the comics' Snuffy Smith. Those who do, said John Crawford of Montreat-Anderson College in Montreat, N.C., are likely to be be "hippies from California or Atlanta."
And when a reporter asked Jean Speer whether there might be any link between old-time mountain attitudes and today's feuding among political jurisdictions in a mountain community such as, say, the Roanoke Valley, she was skeptical.
"I think its really a problem of too many governments in a small place," said Speer, who is director of the Center for Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University. "I'm not sure you wouldn't see the same thing in Texas or anywhere else."
by CNB