Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 28, 1993 TAG: 9309280127
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In two weeks, 150 community leaders from Rocky Mount to Roanoke to Radford will gather at Mountain Lake Hotel in Giles County. There, with the help of a Florida consultant, they'll begin the task of trying to forge an economic "vision" for the region.
Among the problems they'll face, though, none may be trickier than this:
A recent poll commissioned by the Roanoke Times & World-News shows most voters in Roanoke County don't think they need to worry about the economic problems of the city next door.
In the city, most of those surveyed believe the valley's two biggest localities are economically linked, so that the economic health of the city depends on the economic health of the county and vice versa.
But in the county, 52 percent of those surveyed say the county's economic well-being doesn't depend on the city - in effect, that the county can stand alone.
That finding goes a long way toward explaining why county voters haven't been swayed by arguments that consolidation will help spur the valley's economy, says pollster Charles Houston of University Consultants.
And it helps go a long way toward explaining why Roanoke County hasn't anted up for what Roanoke Mayor David Bowers insists is the valley's "No. 1 economic development project" - the Hotel Roanoke in downtown.
But that finding also raises a fundamental question about the embryonic movement toward a regional consensus on how to build a new economic base in Western Virginia:
If the two big localities within the Roanoke Valley can't agree on whether they're economically linked, what hope is there for persuading them that their economic fortunes are tied to the New River Valley's?
For better or worse, say experts who have studied regional economies, that's a common question - and the poll results shouldn't be surprising.
"It's unfortunately typical," says Michael Gallis, an urban policy analyst at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Throughout the nation, "the suburbs think they can go it alone."
And that's a big reason why the United States is having a tough time competing in the global economy, Gallis contends - because its major metropolitan regions aren't able to see themselves as the economic city-states he believes they are.
"Economic fragmentation is the biggest danger facing urban America," he says. "What you see in that suburban-urban split is the beginning of the problem. People don't feel you're on the same team, when, in actuality, the whole area is a single team. Unfortunately, the suburbs don't see it that way."
That's why, Gallis says, the nation's checkerboard system of local government "is the crisis in America today. Everyone says it's the global economy, but it's actually local politics. In Europe and China, they're redrawing the political boundary lines between cities and counties to make large urban regions competitive." The United States isn't.
The growing economic disparity between affluent suburbs and their increasingly impoverished central cities is a common theme in urban policy circles around the country.
It's also the subject of a much-discussed new book - "Cities Without Suburbs" - whose author, Washington consultant David Rusk, will be among the speakers at the Mountain Lake summit next month.
The fact is, say Rusk and Gallis, the economic fortunes of suburbs and their cities are intimately entwined. Rusk points to commuting patterns in the Roanoke Valley: Nearly half of the workers in Roanoke County commute to a job in the city.
However, Rusk warns, "there's a perception question and a factual question." And many suburbanites, he says, don't perceive their economic connections with the central city.
That's partly because they don't want to, says John Moeser, who heads the urban studies department at Virginia Commonwealth University and is regarded as a national expert on the subject of regional cooperation.
"Anytime you talk about the extent we're all wedded together is threatening," Moeser says. "It creates great fear and consternation in the hearts of suburbanites, because that kind of talk could lead to resource-sharing - especially when you abut a jurisdiction with shrinking resources."
These urban policy experts disagree on whether Roanoke County's reluctance to acknowledge its economic ties with the city will complicate the quest for a regional "vision."
"You're not going to bring it together," Gallis says flatly. "It's real simple."
He's considered the "guru of regionalism" in Charlotte, which has been cited by Financial World magazine as a national model for regional economic planning.
"The reason regionalism works here in Charlotte," Gallis says, is that the region's localities understand they depend on each other. "It is a perception of linkage that has enabled us to produce a regional strategy."
But Moeser, who has watched city-suburban conflicts up close in Richmond over the past few years, says Roanoke County's belief that it can go it alone economically won't necessarily interfere with the search for a regional strategy.
Suburban counties often find it easier to talk about regional strategies, he says. "It becomes a little more abstract. Where the discussion breaks down is when it comes down to the city and the suburbs."
The elected leaders in Roanoke and Roanoke County say they're not surprised by the poll's findings - and seem to agree on the solution.
"We need to help the people in Roanoke County and elsewhere understand" their economic connections with the city, Bowers says. "There needs to be some education on that."
But Fuzzy Minnix, the chairman of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, says there are other factors at play, as well.
He suggests one reason county residents say they don't need the city economically is they're getting back at the city for years of perceived mistreatment.
"It's just that the citizens of Roanoke County don't want to be looked down on as second-class citizens, as they have been in the past," Minnix says. "Pretty soon, it will get the point that the county will be bigger than the city."
Roanoke County, Minnix seems to be saying, wants to be treated as the city's equal.
That's why the "visioning process" proposed by the New Century Council - the brainchild of the Roanoke Valley Business Council and Virginia Tech - is so crucial, says Roanoke Vice Mayor Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr., who's quitting his city council seat to run the vision group.
"There does seem to be a lack of understanding," he says. "That's something that visioning is all about. Visioning helps you understand where we stand today, what affects our standard of living, what issues we might face and what we can do about that. So to me, it looks like an appropriate time."
by CNB