Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305250637
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Jeff DeBell/Staff writer Note: above
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What would be the region?
Would it be just the Roanoke Valley? If so, would that be Roanoke and Roanoke County (including Vinton) plus Salem? Would it include Botetourt County, which is part of the federally designated Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area?
Bedford and Franklin counties both have close ties with the metro core. An estimated 12,800 people commute between those localities and the valley every day, most of them coming into the valley. What about those localities?
What about the New River Valley, which exchanges another 5,300 commuters with the Roanoke Valley every day? Certainly its leading citizen, Virginia Tech, makes no secret of wanting stronger ties with the Roanoke Valley.
"Of course it's a part of the Roanoke region," said John Stroud, president of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce. " . . . We have to get away from thinking the region is just the Roanoke Valley."
The idea of regional cooperation has come up most recently in the form of a proposal for cooperative long-range economic development planning. The composition of the region to be planned for still is undetermined, but some combination of Roanoke-area and New River Valley localities would appear to be a good bet, based on what has happened so far.
The Roanoke Valley Business Council, which started the move for a regional economic development plan, has outlined the idea to chambers of commerce and asked them to come aboard. The Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce has signed on, as have the Vinton, Franklin County, Botetourt and Salem-Roanoke County chambers.
"There is no plan to talk to Bedford," said Business Council chairman Thomas Robertson. "It's an important part of this region, but because of the Tech connection our focus has been to the west . . . If the New River Valley does not do well it has a definite impact on the Roanoke Valley because so much of their retail is done here."
Virginia Tech has promised support, and invitations have been extended to chambers in the New River Valley. Response from there has been "pretty positive," Robertson said.
"It's been an interesting exercise for me," Robertson said. "It makes you think about where the commonalities of interests and values are."
In a way, the Roanoke area is already awash in "regions" of one kind or another. Some are official. They're the pieces into which government carves states and packages localities for the purpose of extending services and enforcing regulations. They range in size from a few localities to the vast Appalachian Regional Commission, which encompasses all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states.
Congress has been asked to add Roanoke, Roanoke County, Salem, Montgomery County and Radford to the Western and Southwest Virginia localities that already are members of the Appalachian Regional Commission.
It's a matter of consistency and practicality, said Wayne Strickland, executive director of the Roanoke-based Fifth Planning District Commission, which originated the effort to add the localities.
It would facilitate a regional approach to problem-solving, he said, and could help get federal financial assistance as well. Since its establishment in 1965, the Appalachian commission has funneled more than $272 million into Virginia localities for highway construction and community development projects.
"Roanoke is the hub of Southwest Virginia," Strickland said. "Its impact reaches beyond the city and county into Southwest Virginia. There may be special programs that could benefit the whole region and that Roanoke could work on with the far Southwest."
Other existing "regions" are more informal - shaped by the marketplace and sometimes simply by tradition. They range from a shopping center's market area to the mental image we form when asked what part of the country we're from.
"It's what we think of as our region," said Michael Gallis, urban planning consultant and professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. "It's a perception thing. Everybody will give you a different answer, but there is a general feeling of what it is."
"Regions of the mind" is the term used by Virginia Tech geographer Susan Brooker-Gross.
"It's what people consider themselves to be referent to," she said. "The psychological notion that this is my city."
Official regions tend to be called something else, like metropolitan statistical area or labor market area or, simply, district.
Sometimes there are practical reasons for their composition. Sometimes it's a matter of local preference.
Roanoke is in the Salem Transportation District because its geography, road types and maintenance demands are similar to other parts of the district. Though widely regarded as the gateway to Virginia's Southwest, Roanoke is not in the state Tourism Division's Southwest Blue Ridge Highlands region (read: coal country).
Instead, it is treated as the southern terminus of the division's highly promotable Shenandoah Valley Region (read: tourist country).
"We did bend to the local will," said Martha Steger, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Economic Development, parent of the Tourism Division. "The lines are not all that rigid."
What with the variety and number of official divisions of the state, it's not surprising that localities don't always turn up on the same side of the line. Roanoke and Bedford are in the same state transportation district, but different planning districts and metropolitan statistical areas. Craig County is in the Fifth Planning District along with Roanoke, but it's not in a metropolitan statistical area at all.
All localities of the Fifth Planning District are in the same state health district - except Roanoke, which has its own health district.
New River Valley localities have their own planning district, but are in the Salem Transportation District along with Roanoke Valley localities, Bedford County and other counties to the south.
When it comes to safety enforcement, both the New River and Roanoke valleys are in the state Department of Labor and Industry's Southwest Region - along with faraway Wise, Scott and Lee counties.
New River Valley communities make up the Virginia Employment Commission's Radford Labor Market Area. Commission spokeswoman Nancy Munnikhuysen says "labor market area" is a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics term for "economically integrated geographical unit." Such units, she said, are "areas in which workers can readily change jobs without having to change residences."
There is plenty of economic integration between the Roanoke and New River valleys, of course, but the Roanoke Valley isn't in that labor market area. In fact, it isn't in any labor market area. It's too big. It's in an metropolitan statistical area instead.
The Roanoke statistical area, one of eight in the state, comprises Roanoke, Roanoke County, Botetourt County and Salem.
"A lot of people who call for information about the MSA don't know Botetourt is included," said Deborah Kendall of the Fifth Planning District staff. "They think it's just the Roanoke Valley. Sometimes they have to go back and rethink what they're doing."
Metropolitan statistical areas are built around central cities of at least 50,000 population, with adjoining areas included depending on whether they meet established population density and job commuting requirements. The standards are set by the federal Office of Management and Budget.
In addition to the many official regions, there are unofficial ones. Often they're really vast, fluid markets. They're where people live and work and shop; where newspapers circulate and the electronic media broadcast; where people go to the doctor, take in a concert or watch a ball game.
You could even regard the distance that Roanoke Memorial Hospital's Life-Guard 10 helicopter can travel in time to save victims of severe trauma - about 150 miles - as a region of sorts.
These regions encompass the Roanoke Valley, often with Bedford and Franklin counties and at least portions of the New River Valley. It's beyond there that things get fuzzy. Markets and broadcast signals don't have borders.
`The functioning region'
John Stroud, president of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, calls it "the common market of Western Virginia" and estimates the population at 750,000 to a million people.
"We are a larger region than sometimes we think," he said.
Roanoke-based television stations send their programs (and commercials) into an area of about 25 counties reaching north to Highland County, south to the border with North Carolina, west to Bland County and east through Bedford and Pittsylvania counties. Radio's broadcast region is somewhat larger - about 35 counties - but signals (and commercial sales) are strongest in the metro area.
The situation is similar at this newspaper. The core of its daily "region" consists of Roanoke Valley localities, Pulaski and Montgomery counties to the west and Bedford and Franklin counties to the east and south. But overall circulation encompasses 19 Western and Southwestern Virginia counties.
Roanoke's Tanglewood and Valley View malls use ZIP Code data to analyze their markets. Not surprisingly, the figures show that most customers come from the Roanoke metro area. However, both malls report significant numbers of customers from the New River Valley, counties to the east and south, and even from as far away as West Virginia and North Carolina.
Scott Ashcraft, manager of Valley View, said anything within 30 minutes' driving time is regarded as primary market in the shopping center business. The secondary market is made up of places 30 to 60 minutes away by car.
Attendance data at Center in the Square is stronger on totals than demographics. But it, too, indicates that most patronage comes from the Roanoke Valley with significant additional attendance from the New River Valley and close-to-Roanoke counties like Bedford and Franklin. School groups visit from dozens of districts in Western and Southwestern Virginia, and there are numerous visitors from other states and even other countries.
Located in downtown Roanoke, Center in the Square is home to the Science Museum of Western Virginia, the Roanoke Valley History Museum, the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, Mill Mountain Theatre and the Art Museum of Western Virginia.
The Roanoke Civic Center also attracts customers from a huge area of Western Virginia for its concerts, consumer shows and other events. It's not uncommon for 70 percent of the audience for top entertainers like country music star Garth Brooks to be from outside the valley, according to manager Robert Chapman. Records show consistently large sales for civic center events at ticket outlets in Danville, Lynchburg, Martinsville and Christiansburg.
The valley has become the regional health care center. Though home-grown patients are the mainstay of Salem's Lewis-Gale Hospital and the two Carilion Health System hospitals in Roanoke, many care-seekers come from far beyond the valley.
Especially when specialized care is needed, said Carilion senior vice president Lucas Snipes, the market/region grows to encompass virtually all of Western and Southwestern Virginia and even a few of the easternmost counties of West Virginia.
Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley handles the neo-natal and pediatric intensive care end of things, while Roanoke Memorial Hospital is the regional center for specialized cancer treatment and open-heart surgery.
Going to shop, to work, to a ball game or the doctor - these are what UNC-Charlotte's Michael Gallis calls social and economic "transfers." They have their distinctions; professional basketball will lure people 100 miles or more, a symphony concert 40 or 50.
A good example of these transfers is provided by the commuting patterns of Virginia workers, as extracted from 1990 census data by the Virginia Employment Commission.
It shows an estimated 20,000 daily "in-commuters" to the Roanoke Valley and 5,450 "out-commuters," for a net of 14,550.
Of those coming into the Roanoke Valley, 4,150 come from the New River Valley. Another 6,900 come from Bedford and Bedford County. That is more than commute from Bedford to Lynchburg (4,960) - even though Bedford is part of the Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area - and just slightly fewer than the 7,200 who travel from Bedford to Lynchburg-Campbell County-Amherst County combined.
The Roanoke Valley's daily in-commuters also include an estimated 4,780 from Franklin County; 1,100 from Craig County; 420 from Alleghany County, Clifton Forge or Covington; and 100 from Lynchburg.
Travel in the opposite direction includes 1,115 from the Roanoke Valley to New River Valley communities; 570 to Bedford or Bedford County; 520 to Franklin County; 450 to Alleghany County, Clifton Forge or Covington; and 110 to Lynchburg.
Together, the commuting data and other of Gallis' "transfers" make up what he calls "the functioning region." He said it typically will consist of a core metro area surrounded by a population that uses the core but doesn't live in it. That's the economic region, he said, and it doesn't have to consist of millions of people.
The Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton area of North Carolina has about 150,000 people. Hickory, the largest of the three cities, is home to 28,000. Yet Gallis said the area's leaders understand that what benefits one community benefits all of them, and they are reaping the rewards of cooperative planning, promotion and economic development.
"What it finally boils down to is leadership," he said. "You need leadership that is aware of change and is interested in making changes."
Tyler Norris of the Denver-based National Civic League agrees.
"Typically there's a champion or two to get things started," he said. They start what he calls an "initiating committee," and that carefully chooses the "content group" that is charged with formulating a region's long-range plan for development.
"The content group is a much larger group of stake-holders," he said. It should include representatives of "everyone who's impacted. . . . You're better off erring on the side of inclusivity."
The localities making up such regions typically are contiguous, but that isn't always the case. Many of the people who hold service jobs in the upscale resort community of Aspen, Colo., can't afford to live there. Some live three counties "down valley," or more than an hour's drive away.
Yet they're formally involved in planning for the Aspen community, Norris said, because "economically they are linked absolutely inextricably. Functionally speaking, if you don't include those people, the project won't be worth doing."
Likewise, a regional plan for developing the area around Oklahoma City involves people from Norman, Okla., because the two communities are tightly linked economically. Located about 35 minutes away by car, Norman is home to the University of Oklahoma and is the starting point of 43,000 daily commuters into Oklahoma City. Statistics show an estimated 5,800 heading in the opposite direction, according to Linda Koenig of the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments.
Norris is helping the four-county, 21-city area through the slow process of forming a good regional development plan.
`Watching a skyscraper'
"It's like watching a skyscraper get built," he said. "There's a huge hole in the ground for a long, long time. Then all of a sudden it's like a floor a week."
Places that fail to build such "skyscrapers" are in danger of being left behind in the new global economy, Gallis said. He says that economy is based on a worldwide network over which product components are distributed and redistributed on the way to final assembly, and that the major stops on the network are regional "city-states" located near international airports. Charlotte, N.C., has become such a place, Gallis said.
Supporting the primary network, the professor says, is a secondary network of "satellite" city-states that are smaller but with potentially exploitable strengths - among them lower costs, less crime, better labor conditions and a "more intimate lifestyle" than may be possible in the larger urban areas.
"Your weaknesses may be part of your advantages," he said. "The question is how to be a community that is desirable."
Answering that question isn't easy. It involves a painstaking examination of regional social and economic factors and urbanization patterns, plus an analysis of infrastructure and manufacturing with an eye toward detecting the best potential for development.
"We call it an audit," Gallis said. "It's like looking at a human skeleton." The payoff is a niche in the global network of component assembly and distribution.
The audit must be regional to be effective, he said, and it must include an assessment of the smaller city-state's connection with the primary, worldwide economic network.
"Too many communities just look internally at themselves," Gallis said. "They don't look at the pattern of the global economy. Unless you are aware of your connection to the world economy, you can spend all the money in the world and get nothing."
by CNB