Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501200020
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Construction of housing within view of the Blue Ridge Parkway illustrates the problem of the trade-offs between environmental preservation and development that will occupy area residents in the near future, Strickland said. Another is the impending problem of tall construction on the sides of mountains overlooking the valley.
The question for the coming years, he said, is how we end the dispute of ``us vs. them'' and instead ``try a win-win situation, knowing that development will occur but not at the detriment of the environment.''
Five years from now, Strickland said, people will be more active in environmental concerns and more vocal in expressing those concerns about such issues as ridge line protection.
We have to make decisions about what trade-offs we will accept, such as some reduction in air quality to build a highway for economic development. Every piece of land cleared leads to erosion, Strickland said, and there are even problems of noise pollution.
``How important is a view?'' Strickland asked, and are we willing to deny owners the right to develop land in order to preserve our view? Solving the problem of Electric Road's ``too tall building,'' an office building that drew complaints about its height from nearby residents, shows how some of these problems can be worked out, he said.
Transportation is a concern in this part of Virginia, which is less accessible than many other areas, Strickland said. We face questions about how easy it is to move around the Roanoke Valley and allow people to come in.
The discussion has concentrated on highways, he said, but issues are rising that deal with public transit and how to move people efficiently around town.
Air accessibility is a transportation and economic development issue, Strickland said. So is movement of freight by train and truck.
Trucks already constitute 40 percent of the traffic on Interstate 81, he said, so the question is whether it should be widened to three or four lanes in each direction or if there are better ways to move people and freight.
In five years, he said, people will have to decide the best mixture of road building, public transit, aviation and railroads. That's because money for transportation will be limited.
Questions of economic development tie into education and into the whole idea of the global economy, Strickland said.
In five years, nobody will be able to sell goods and services just in domestic markets, he said. The market will be global, and Americans are behind competitors in Germany and Japan in accepting this concept.
In education, he said, we still are training people for the assembly line the way we produced in the 1940s and 1950s. That means we can't compete as well.
We face the question of the best way to retool people for the new economy with skills in mathematics and computer technology. And, Strickland added, we have not put much emphasis on vocational education because we want to see all young people go to college. Other countries realize some people are better off studying for a trade without higher education.
In five years, many young people will be coming into the work force, Strickland said, and we will have to consider how to ``find them work to do.''
Colleges and vocational schools teach people how to work for someone else. ``We've lost the ability to teach people how to become entrepreneurs,'' Strickland said. Business incubators may be an answer, he said, because 85 percent of all businesses employ fewer than 50 people.
This country is still on the cutting edge of technology, he said, but there is growing strength in Europe and the Pacific Rim. We have to consider how we will keep our edge in the next century.
In the field of government regulations, he said, the movement of the coming years will be to remove responsibilities from the national and state level to the local level. ``We feel now we have to obtain a grant from a state or federal agency to get work done.''
Unless there is a dramatic change, he said, five years from now local governments will have to provide services with limited resources. People will be looking at how resources can be shared through regional cooperation.
Strickland doesn't see government consolidation in the years ahead, but he believes there will be more cooperation.
Regional thinking will enlarge, Strickland said. Governments will have to look beyond the Fifth Planning District to cooperate with people in the New River Valley, Shenandoah Valley and Mount Rogers. He sees a need to focus on Western Virginia as a whole, cooperating with people up and down the Interstate 81 corridor.
by CNB