THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412090341
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Two stories last week brought sharp focus to Portsmouth's problem situation.
One reported on a University of Virginia study pointing to suburban sprawl and the multiple societal problems it creates for places such as Hampton Roads.
The other explained crime statistics that unfortunately - and unfairly - tarnish this city's image, even among its own people.
Those who did the study predicted little change in the sprawling problem as long as citizens follow the lure of developers bent on getting theirs, regardless of what happens to Hampton Roads in the future.
Portsmouth is the victim in many ways of suburban sprawl.
When it failed many years ago to annex county land that should have been part of this city, it set the pattern. After Norfolk County and South Norfolk merged to form Chesapeake in 1963, the division of Churchland wound up in the courts. Any court that permitted a city line to zig-zag across the landscape as that one does should have been impeached!
From that day forward, Portsmouth was stuck with limited space and immovable boundaries.
Then, people in Portsmouth followed the siren call of developers, moving across city lines to Chesapeake and Suffolk. They believed that they would get all city services without paying as much for them as they would in Portsmouth. That turned out to be a false notion.
Many of those same people who live on the perimeters of Portsmouth depend on this city for their jobs. For all practical purposes, they live in Portsmouth. They belong to clubs and churches here. They attend Portsmouth events because most Chesapeake events are down around Great Bridge and Suffolk events are way over in the original town.
A decade ago, when this newspaper split the six-day-a-week Currents into two three-day-a-week publications, keeping Currents for Portsmouth and adding the Clipper for Chesapeake, many residents of Chesapeake and Suffolk complained loud and long that they needed the Currents because they wanted to know about Portsmouth activities. The newspaper acquiesced and now many residents of the suburbs receive two or maybe three of the tabloids.
These are the same people who left the city. Some sometimes even enjoy putting Portsmouth down.
Now we get to the crime statistics.
One reason they look so bad is that a large part of Portsmouth's population has moved across the line and only those who live within the city limits are factored into the calculations.
Many ``Portsmouth people'' are outside the statistics and that runs up our percentages, which are based on the number of incidents per 1,000 people. If all the residents of Chesapeake and Suffolk who really live more in Portsmouth than elsewhere were tax-paying Portsmouthians, the statistical picture would look quite different. So would the city's finances.
The U.Va. researchers suggested that sprawl should be controlled to keep older suburbs from decline. They also proposed state policies to keep and attract people to existing developed areas.
Because it's highly unlikely we'll see any government policies to control development over the next few years, cities must work on creating places people want to live.
Actually, as suburbs become more crowded with unbridled development and unbearable traffic, the trend back to the cities will undoubtedly increase. At the same time, so will the trend to move farther out in the suburbs.
Portsmouth has a lot of assets - a lot of waterfront property, many small town neighborhoods populated by nice, friendly people, among other things.
A consultant hired by Norfolk to do a plan for Ocean View held up the traditional town laid out in squares as the answer to improving life in this country. He proposes ``creating'' such neighborhoods rather than the subdivisions that tend to isolate people and force them to rely on an automobile for all their needs.
Portsmouth already has many neighborhoods designed on a human scale many years ago. We don't have to start over. But we must take care of the neighborhoods and respect them as the places of the future that they are.
Understanding the problems, including the crime statistics distorted by Portsmouth's unique configuration, is a good place to begin. by CNB