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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 22, 1993                   TAG: 9303220399
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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QUALITY OF LIFE

VIRGINIA TECH professor Thomas Johnson offered several insightful observations in a talk last week to the Ferrum College Regional Business Symposium. Here are two of his points, which are mostly common sense but bear repeating anyway:

The region's natural amenities - its rivers and forests, mountains and clean water, etc. - are a crucial resource. They help attract the sorts of people who can add value to services and products in a global marketplace, and thereby help the local economy grow. But amenities-based growth must be managed well, or the basis for growth will be depleted and destroyed.

Some factors bearing on economic-development success we cannot change to our advantage; others we can. The latter include the quality of cooperation among local governments, the quality of life supported by public services, and - above all - the quality of the schools. Of "critical importance" is the region's "less-than-world-class primary and secondary education system," warned Johnson.

Is anyone listening?

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