ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 TAG: 9703260045
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
The Roanoke metro area's population is growing a bit faster, and a few places are booming. But in the New River Valley, 1996 population estimates suggest, growth is near a standstill.
EVEN AS statewide population growth in Virginia is slowing, the Roanoke metro area may be turning around its population stagnation of the 1980s.
Still, the turnaround is slight, at least so far. Growth in most of Western Virginia continues to lag behind that of the state as a whole. The New River Valley, whose population boomed during the 1960s and '70s, may be dropping to the near no-growth levels that the Roanoke metro area experienced during the '80s.
Moreover, 1996 population estimates recently reported by the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service raise questions about this region's ability to channel growth in a way that preserves the countryside and natural scenery that many Western Virginians value so highly.
That's because the big-growth localities so far in the '90s are the outlying, traditionally rural counties of Botetourt (13 percent growth since '90), Bedford (nearly 20 percent) and Franklin (12 percent). The fastest-growing locality in the New River Valley Planning District is rural Floyd County, though its 8.7 percent population growth since 1990 is calculated on the relatively small base of a 1990 population of about 12,000.
Statewide, Virginia's growth rate fell from 1.6 percent per year at the beginning of the decade to 0.9 percent in 1995-96. A portion of the decline in the growth rate is due to a slight lessening of the natural population increase (that is, the excess of births over deaths). But more significant, reports UVa demographer Julia H. Martin, has been a substantial drop in net migration.
Nevertheless, Virginia remains a net in-migration state. Net migration, small but nevertheless on the plus side, also contributed to population growth for the Roanoke metro area - which consists of Roanoke, Roanoke County, Salem and Botetourt County - of 2.7 percent for the six years since 1990. This is more than the 1.9 percent growth for the entire decade of the '80s.
But in the New River Valley, the picture is the reverse. The combined population of the four counties (Montgomery, Pulaski, Giles and Floyd) and one city (Radford) that make up the New River Valley Planning District grew by 2.3 percent from 1990 to 1996. For the first time since the 1950s, the New River Valley's population is growing more slowly than the Roanoke Valley's.
Plummeting growth rates are particularly evident in the university communities of Montgomery County and Radford. The combined population of those adjoining localities grew by nearly 40 percent in the '60s, by 30 percent in the '70s, by 17 percent in the '80s. For the first six years of the '90s, their combined population grew by little more than 2 percent.
While the growth gap apparently is narrowing between Western Virginia and the state as a whole, the story varies widely from locality to locality. And overall, the narrowing is more the result of the slowdown in the state's rate of growth than any big upturn in Western Virginia's.
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