THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506170156
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
The eruption among Virginia Beach, North Carolina, Norfolk, Southside Virginia, Northeast North Carolina and any-body else who can possibly cash in on the water crisis is only a symptom. Name a societal malady - urban poverty, crime, teen pregnancy, illiteracy, HIV; suburban sun-dried zoysia; the commonwealth's uncompetitiveness - and the sure cure for it is regionalism.
The Urban Issues Forum sponsored last week by The Urban Partnership showed that many pub-lic officials, academicians and corporate honchos agree with David Goode of Norfolk Southern:
``You can avoid inner-city problems for a time by fleeing to the suburbs, but unless you address them effectively at their root, they will follow you.''
Decaying cities drag down surrounding communities, and they have the studies to prove it.
Most suburbanites know it. What they doubt, resist and resent - a reaction the Partnership must assuage - is the basic remedy it proposes: coax-ing, even coercing the 'burbanites into responsibility for fixing the urban miasma they worked so hard to flee. A Virginia Commonwealth University study that the Partnership quotes traces that reaction not to racial (or racist) factors but behavioral:
``Regardless of residential status or race, income and education, the majority of persons regard lack of personal re-spon-si-bil-i-ty by city residents as one of the most important causes of urban problems.''
If the personal irresponsibility of their inhabitants makes cities poor, then how - given the federal fortune and high local taxes spent and misspent in 30 years of combatting poverty - will transferring (more) suburban and exurban revenue to urban control make poor cities, much less their regions, prosper?
Worse, suppose the legislature mandates, on urban gurus' advice, that 15% to 20% of new housing be sold or leased to low-income households? Suppose that's a triumph of hope over experience with the power of osmosis to repeal Gresham's Law of Neighborhoods/Schools - lousy neigh-bors/students tend to drive out good?
The urban partners are researching specific solutions. Great. But they need a far more positive, persuasive pitch for regionalism than either altruism or extortion, and a more win-win definition than this: from each locality according to ability, to each according to need. by CNB