Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 19, 1995 TAG: 9506200031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Yet for all their differences, Hampton Roads and Western Virginia share a common and self-defeating characteristic. In decrying the relative lack of regional cohesion in Hampton Roads, Norfolk Southern Chairman David Goode last week could as easily have cited (as, in the past, he has) our neck of the Western Virginia woods.
Goode also as easily could have been talking about Western Virginia as Hampton Roads when he identified one key contributor to the latter's lack of regional cohesion: a fragmented local-government structure that has generated more regional rivalry than regional planning, and that has aggravated the ailments of core cities and their suburbs.
"It's difficult for people to buy into a regional identity when the cities compete with each other for employers, revenues and resources," Goode said in Norfolk at a gathering of representatives of the 16 cities, including Roanoke, belonging to the Urban Partnership. "It's difficult for people to think of themselves as citizens of a region when their municipaI leaders are drawing swords over water issues."
In Hampton Roads, the local-government structure happens to consist of inner and suburban cities - rather than, as in the Roanoke region, inner cities and suburban counties - and a Norfolk-Virginia Beach dispute over the latter's plan to draw water from Lake Gaston happens to be an issue du jour. But make the requisite but modest editing changes, and on this, too, Goode as easily could have been talking about Western Virginia.
The strategy of trying to isolate social problems in inner cities, as the NS chairman and native Roanoker observed, ultimately and inevitably backfires. By intensifying urban problems rather than easing them, the strategy not only fails to prevent the problems from spilling over into suburbs. It also undermines a region's ability to compete against economic rivals elsewhere. That's what's happening now in Virginia.
Evidence continues to mount of the close link between the economic progress of a metro area, suburb as much as inner city, and the intensity of its regionalism. The Charlottes and Raleigh-Durhams, the Jacksonvilles and San Antonios - places with "a regional identity, based on a strong urban core," to quote Goode again, that they "can rally behind and market to the world" - have enjoyed economic growth at a time when per-capita incomes in Virginia's metro areas have been stagnant or declining.
Not only does regional fragmentation entail inefficiencies in government services and encourage the petty squabbles among oversized egos that are all too evident around here. Cramped vision also leads to a failure to capitalize on regional opportunities, and a misunderstanding of where the real competition lies.
Virginia's metro areas probably aren't going to be consolidating existing governments anytime soon. But core cities, suburbs and surrounding countryside must on a regional basis recognize each other's strengths and needs, and share the strengths while working together to address the needs. That was Goode's advice. It's also good advice.
by CNB