THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 19, 1994 TAG: 9410180111
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
When Hardy Elementary School teacher Pat Payne was searching for a municipal planner to talk with her students about cities of the future, she looked beyond the borders of her students' home county.
``I was looking for a large city struggling with growth,'' Payne said. ``I wanted somebody to bring out the problems of a big city.''
That's why Payne reached into neighboring Chesapeake.
Payne's students in Hardy Elementary's gifted and talented program and students across the county are currently practicing to participate in the 1994-95 Future Problem Solving Program.
The practice problem this year, Payne explained, has to do with an American city from 2001 to 2020.
According to the practice problem, during that time many of the workers don't even have to report to their jobs. They work from home through computers and other communications networks.
Therefore, the cities are declining again, just as many did in the 1960s when downtowns began to fade away. During this time, metropolitan areas in the U.S. lose population - again.
Students working on the problem pretend they have been asked to serve on the ``City Living in the Future'' subcommittee after an Ohio governor proposes a totally new city designed to attract people back to raise their families.
Payne said she felt the students needed to take a look at a real city and the problems that city is facing today. So she invited Steven Wright, a long-range planner for Chesapeake, to talk with the class.
Wright, however, seemed unprepared for the degree of homework the third-, fourth- and fifth-graders had already done.
``Is there a green belt around Chesapeake?'' one student asked.
The young planner, dressed in a double-breasted business suit, shirt and tie, stepped back, and his mouth dropped open.
``Whoa!,'' he said, grinning as the students giggled at his response.
But he came up with an answer.
``No,'' Wright said, ``Chesapeake does not have a green belt. But we do require every housing development that starts up in Chesapeake to set aside green space, a park.''
Wright told the students exactly how complex the problems of a growing city can get. One particular area the planners have been watching, he said, is South Norfolk, an older community that once was a business hub but has declined over the years.
``We'll actually give businesses money to lure them to South Norfolk,'' the planner said. ``We call it an enterprise zone. The city pays all start-up fees and permits.''
Wright said his office uses a five-step procedure to try to solve planning problems in Chesapeake: identify the goals; study and analyze; prepare the policy; put the policy in action; monitor it and give feedback.
``The fifth step is the most important,'' he said. ``You step back and look at what you've done. You ask yourself, `Did we accomplish the goal?' ''
And the students had more questions. They wanted to know how Chesapeake handles waste; what kinds of problems the city has with crime; how the city handles traffic; and what Chesapeake does to control pollution.
``Chesapeake is considered a very clean city,'' Wright said. ``We really don't have a lot of heavy industry. We have what we call light industry. It doesn't create a lot of smoke or pollution.''
And the youngsters wanted to know: ``In Smithfield, are the meat packing plants heavy or light industry?''
Instead of answering directly, Wright gave them an example from his own life.
``I grew up in Portsmouth,'' he said. ``It was about three blocks from a Gwaltney plant there. There was not a whole lot of smoke or trash, but you could always smell it. And smells are air pollution.''
The city of the future the youngsters are helping to plan, dubbed ``Optima'' in the problem, is battling many of the same problems that Chesapeake battles daily.
Rather than business, like Chesapeake, the future city is trying to attract residents. So Optima's city planners offer poor families a free home site and $20,000 to help with construction costs, if they convince a ``monetary assistance review board'' that they sincerely want to improve their lives and will work for the good of the community.
The students participating in Future Problem solving are charged with selecting one underlying problem, and they must submit their 20 best solutions to the task force for review.
The students must turn in their answers to the officials at Future Problem Solving by the end of October, Payne said. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Chesapeake planner Steven Wright discusses the problems of the ``big
city'' with Hardy Elementary School students.
by CNB