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

DATE: SUNDAY, December 18, 1994                   TAG: 9412200020
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IF THE CITIES SUFFER, WE ALL DO

Some, like Roanoke, are managed better than others. Some are murder capitals; others, comparative havens of safety. Some "cities" are suburban counties in all but name; some "counties" have become core cities in all but name.

Richmond and Norfolk, while themselves not growing, are at the center of metropolitan areas that in recent years have boomed. In the Roanoke Valley, even suburban growth is slow.

Yet, despite the variety, several themes are common among Virginia's urban centers - themes that emerge on today's Commentary page, themes having mostly to do with interconnectedness:

The social and economic difficulties plaguing many American cities may have been a tad slower in coming to Virginia's cities, but are not passing them by.

The health of Virginia's suburbs - for that matter, of the entire state - ultimately depends on the health of the core cities to which they are linked.

The health of Virginia's private sector is tied to the health of the cities' public sector, and the latter's ability to provide efficiently the services on which commerce and competitiveness depend.

Obvious points? Maybe, but they're far from universally accepted.

Virginia's cities are not as a rule among America's basket cases (exception: Richmond's murder rate), which sometimes masks the erosion under way. But while cities here are healthier than the nation's worst examples, they are hurting from urban ills found everywhere, among them: aging infrastructure and the concentration of poor and minority populations.

They also are hindered by Virginia's unique and antiquated independent-city system of local government. And they are, in any event, doing worse than some: "I'm tired," says Jean E. Clary, board chairman of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, "of North Carolina eating our lunch."

The myth that suburban enclaves offer permanent protection from urban ills gets in the way as well. As Roanoke banking executive Warner N. Dalhouse observes, a core city's ailments eventually make their way to the suburbs. Economies, moreover, are increasingly regional in nature. The genuine competition today is not within metro areas, but - as Richmond utility executive James T. Rhodes notes - between one metro area (or "citistate") and others across the globe.

Yet for reasons of race and class, as economist Anthony Downs reminds us, the interdependence of core city and suburb too often goes goes unrecognized. If urban problems for too long go unaddressed as a regional challenge, everyone may go down the tubes.

Finally, the idea that the quality of public-sector services is important to private-sector performance - indeed, the idea of public-private partnership - challenges some of the libertarian impulses now ascendant in America.

Government still is needed to help organize an infrastructure for progress, from a high-quality work force and transportation and communications links, to civil order and livable communities. The call should be not so much to get the public sector out of the way, as to make it more efficient and more attuned to private-sector truths about the value of core cities, the nature of global competition and the economic integrity of metropolitan regions.