Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 12, 1993 TAG: 9403170020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The effort by the new group, dubbing itself the New Century Council, is as welcome as it is overdue.
It's too soon to tell how it will all work out, of course, or whether it will be successful. Suspicions, both within and between the two valleys, will have to be overcome, and confused issues, such as the relationship between growth and quality of life, clarified.
An ongoing process and organization, not just for setting regional goals but for monitoring progress toward achieving them, can't be quickly or easily established.
Participants will have to agree it's at least worth trying to develop a common vision, tying together prospects of the region's suburbs and inner-city, its universities and farms.
A greater effort will have to be made to include input from people of all walks of life, including minorities and women, neighborhood leaders and labor, educators and environmentalists, elected officials - and a great many people with no official capacity except as interested citizens and taxpayers who live here and care about the region's and their children's future.
Participants will have to find ways, ultimately, to ignore the naysayers who offer not constructive criticism, but paranoid and reflexive opposition to any gropings toward regional leadership.
All of which may seem a daunting agenda, but at least and finally a start has been made.
Pulling together business leaders and public officials from both the Roanoke and New River valleys for today's ice-breaking retreat is a good start, especially when you consider there's no consensus yet that the two valleys even comprise a single economic region.
And perhaps within reach is consensus, on principle anyway, that a region with clear strategies, priorities and goals is likely to enjoy more control over its economic destiny than a region without - that a future accomplished is preferable to a fate imposed.
All the obstacles and difficulties and predictable squabbling notwithstanding, this region enjoys at least one advantage as it embarks on the vision thing: We are not a disaster area. We don't require life support or emergency surgery.
We inhabit, mostly everyone can agree, a really nice place. A place that, in many ways and compared to many other places, works pretty well. Which means that a regional vision may consist, in good part, in figuring out how to preserve what we like about our community.
Just because we might wish to emulate aspects of success stories in Charlotte or Greensboro, doesn't mean we'd want to trade places with them.
Just because we've grown accustomed to the mountains and the valleys, our cultural attractions and pleasant neighborhoods, doesn't mean we should fail to appreciate the surprise, even wonderment, that typically accompanies a visitor's introduction to this place.
The vision initiative begun today should focus on problems, and measure progress against that of other communities. But it also must try to maximize our region's assets, which are considerable. And it should be informed by a sense of who we are.
We are many good things. Right now, possessors of a clear and compelling, long-term, regional vision isn't one of them. But with help, we can improve our vision.
by CNB