Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 16, 1994                   TAG: 9402160018
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ROANOKE VALLEY: WHERE FEW BABIES OR JOBS ARE BORN

For better or worse, the Roanoke Valley's slow population growth in the 1980s has continued into the 1990s.

How slow?

The U.S. Census Bureau has released population estimates that show only four metropolitan areas in the Southeast grew more slowly than the Roanoke Valley from 1990 to 1992:

One was Danville, in the buckle of the South's textile-and-tobacco belt, two industries that have been hit hard by economic changes.

The second was Jacksonville, N.C., the home of the Marine base at Camp Lejeune, where defense cutbacks have dealt a body blow to the local economy.

The other two were in north-central Alabama - Anniston and Gadsden - never a high-growth region.

How slow is slow?

The Census Bureau estimates that from 1990 to 1992, the population of the Roanoke Valley (defined as Roanoke, Roanoke County, Salem and Botetourt County) grew from 224,477 to 226,282 - an increase of 0.8 percent.

By contrast, two nearby metro areas grew more than twice as fast. The Bristol-Kingsport-Johnson City, Tenn., metro area saw its population grow by 2 percent. And Lynchburg's metro population increased by 2.3 percent.

Farther east, the string of bigger cities along Interstates 95 and 85 saw their populations continue to swell at a fast clip - ranging from 2.7 percent in Greensboro/Winston-Salem, N.C., and 3.5 percent in Richmond to 4.3 percent in Charlotte, N.C., and 6.3 percent in Raleigh/Durham, N.C.

Why is the Roanoke Valley's growth rate so out of line with that of other cities in the South?

"We have no explanation," says Jeanne Brown, a demographer at the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service, the state's top number-crunchers on census data.

Others who have studied the Roanoke Valley more closely offer these explanations:

There are only two ways to increase population - either by people moving in, or by people being born. And Roanoke doesn't have the economy, or the demography, to encourage much of either, the experts say.

"Why would people move to Roanoke?" Virginia Tech geographer Susan Brooker-Gross asks. She doesn't mean that derisively, she said, just factually.

There's no particular engine of economic growth that would attract newcomers, she says - no big high-growth industries or major research universities.

She also points out that the Roanoke Valley has fewer young adults and more senior citizens than the national average. That's another brake on population growth, because an older population means fewer births.

While Roanoke may stand out among Southern cities, its slow growth isn't unusual in a national context. Its demographic and economic profile most closely matches that of Rust Belt cities around the Great Lakes. The population estimates "fit what we've talked about . . . Roanoke as the Rust Belt City of the South," Brooker-Gross says.

"Roanoke is basically a no-growth place," agrees David Rusk, an urban consultant who spoke last fall to the New Century Council, a group of Roanoke Valley and New River Valley business and community leaders.

The key point to remember, he says, is that population growth generally reflects economic growth - people move to where the good jobs are.

"You can't expect quality economic growth without some population growth," he says. "It just doesn't happen."