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

DATE: SUNDAY, December 18, 1994                   TAG: 9412200018
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WARNER N. DALHOUSE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ALL THE STATE HAS A STAKE IN CORE-CITY CONDITIONS

The urban population centers of Virginia have endemic problems similar to the cities of America. But only in the past 10 years, in most cases, have those problems become pronounced enough to be visible - or visible enough to get our attention.

Or perhaps it is just our realization that job creation and maintenance is the most important job of government and a central responsibility of any healthy society.

The issues are not complicated:

It is the urban centers in which poverty and unemployment become concentrated.

That invariably leads to a concentration of crime.

Which, like falling dominoes, moves younger people to the suburbs for quality of life and security.

That eventually causes the urban center to have an aging population base and declining property values.

It becomes insidious.

Tourists and shoppers go elsewhere - tax revenues fall.

Fewer resources are available to counter the problems.

And, finally, economic development decisions bypass the cities. New jobs are not created, existing jobs begin to be lost, and the city dies.

Amorphous corporations do not make decisions about new plant expansions - people do. And people cannot create jobs or retain existing jobs in an environment in which workers cannot be happy and safe.

That's precisely why cities have not fully enjoyed the economic growth over the past two decades.

Cities must grow in order to avoid stagnation, and Virginia's cities are not growing as are cities in competitive states.

Those urban problems eventually begin to affect the surrounding suburbs. The carjacker, the burglar, the drug dealer could not care less about artificial political boundaries. He will go where the property and opportunities are. Things will eventually become squalid and sour enough that industry will even avoid the adjacent suburbs to an urban center gone bad.

If conditions are similar in other cities, the entire state sees its ability to compete eroded, and the problem that started at manageable size instead takes decades to reverse.

Our view in the Urban Partnership is not this year or the next three. Our view is 20 years out.

We have urban problems, some becoming severe, but we don't have irreversible conditions. If we begin now to try to find solutions to those initial signs of carcinoma, we will be competitive in 20 years, as I am certain we won't if we don't.

We must recognize that Virginia and its cities are compared to other states and their cities every day. How we look is a relative thing. So we need to be among the best and to focus on these cities now.

We are in the early stages of an unusually powerful business cycle that began before NAFTA and GATT could have any effect on it. A lot is going on in the creation of new jobs all across the spectrum. We are very fortunate to have a governor giving economic development his personal attention and a very high priority.

So we are going to be scrutinized closely - our cities, our communities, our problems, our relative attractiveness to other states and other areas. Assuring vibrant, vigorous, healthy and exciting cities is essential to our ability to compete. We must put our best minds and our best efforts to the task.

We cannot be competitive, we cannot even be healthy as a commonwealth without very healthy urban centers.

Warner N. Dalhouse of Roanoke is chairman of First Union National Bank of Virginia.