Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9409010047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I don't recall the exact numbers. They were about as solid as quicksand anyway. But the update went something like this: Instead of, say, 20 percent, the revisers said, Soviet military spending actually amounted to, say, 40 percent of that nation's economy.
Only later did the salient fact protrude from the camouflage. The guess-timate of Soviet military spending hadn't risen. Rather, the Soviet economy was much weaker than previously thought.
That memory came to mind the other day with the news that, according to Money magazine, Roanoke's quality of life had slipped from a respectable 81st of 300 cities in America to a lowly 201st - and in the short space of a single year.
I racked my brain.
Well, sure, the place has problems; what place doesn't?
But in the past year had the Roanoke Valley economy gone down the toilet? Not that I could recall. Racial warfare erupted? Not that I'd noticed. Taxes skyrocketed? Again, no. Traffic gotten horribly gridlocked? Well, traffic can get tied up on Elm Avenue crossing I-581, but there's nothing new about that.
Had violent villains taken the city hostage? Au contraire. Serious crime in Roanoke city has been dropping, actually, and almost a full eight months into 1994, not a single murder had been reported - a statistic that still hasn't received quite the attention it deserves.
The climate? A few hot, muggy days this summer I could've done without; the ice this past winter I'd just as soon never see again. But we've had our usual share - which is to say more than most places - of comfortably seasonal weather.
Time, I thought, for a reality check.
I stepped out onto my front porch, glanced up and down my Old Southwest street. Hmmm, no old buildings razed for parking lots, not lately anyway.
I strolled over to Highland Park. It looked about as I remembered it; no vast swards asphalted over.
I found a good vantage and looked up. Nope, the mountains hadn't disappeared.
I walked downtown, checklist in hand. City library? Still there. City Market? Ditto. Center in the Square? Hadn't moved. Restaurants, bakeries, shops? Yo, yo, yo. The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra? Not at its old location, but only a few blocks west in better digs.
Empty storefronts on Campbell? Worrisome, but it was also worrisome last year.
Elsewhere in the valley, Roanoke and Hollins colleges were still standing, and the Grandin was still showing second-run flicks at reduced prices. The Mill Mountain star was still contributing to or detracting from (depending on your point of view) the livability of the Roanoke Valley; either way, no change.
But maybe the quality of life had declined in subtler ways.
On Sunday, I checked out church. Greeters still friendly, ushers still efficient, music still tuneful, sermon still eloquent. Schisms? None in evidence. Departures from expected Presbyterian polity and practice? None I could tell. Not that I'm an expert, but I doubt Money magazine is, either.
Other denominations seemed in good shape as well.
Over the next couple of days, I kept eyes and ears open for signs of, oh, anything I might have missed earlier.
Was the Roanoke populace growing surlier? The "please" and "thank-you" quotient seemed no lower than a year ago. On the streets and in the neighborhoods, people still chatted with, nodded at and hailed each other. The jerk minority seems to have gotten jerkier, but that's a national trend.
Like the number of nukes, MiGs and AK-47s in the arsenals of the old Red Army, the good and bad points of Roanoke's various and sundry amenities hadn't changed; the context for counting them had.
According to its surveys, the magazine claimed, the relative values placed by its readers on various components of "quality of life" had shifted. In figuring the ranked list of cities, therefore, the relative weights put on various components of livability had been changed accordingly.
Figuring quality of life by the numbers has long struck me as a curious exercise, useful to a point but limited by the fact so much of it is a matter of taste - and, as we now learn, fickle taste at that.
A "good quality of life" may well boost a community's efforts to develop economically. But in the end, it should be the other way around.
The phrase is too flexible, too open to abuse, to forget that economic development is not quality of life but rather the means toward attaining and sustaining whatever quality of life is desired by the community.
Those who define "good quality of life" should be the people who're trying to live it.
by CNB