Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 1, 1994 TAG: 9403020003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the annual poll, sponsored by this newspaper and directed by Roanoke College political scientist Harry Wilson:
Most respondents identified Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem as part of the Roanoke Valley; about a third included Botetourt County; fewer than one in five listed other places, including New River Valley localities.
More than half included Botetourt and Franklin counties, and about half included Bedford County, as part of Roanoke's wider economic region; a minority (46 percent) included Montgomery County, home of Virginia Tech.
Only 10 percent of respondents, when asked to select the two best of six strategies for promoting economic growth in the Roanoke Valley, picked closer ties with Tech.
Topographically, the majority's answer on the first point is pretty much correct. Bedford County, for example, is east of the Blue Ridge: It's a piedmont county on the other side of the eastern rim of the bowl-shaped Roanoke Valley. Though the southern portion of Botetourt County is a bedroom community and the county is included by the U.S. Census Bureau in the Roanoke metro area, much of it is in the James River Valley, an entirely distinct watershed from the Roanoke Valley. While the Roanoke River has headwaters in Montgomery County, the Tech campus and most of the county's population are on the other side of the Eastern Continental Divide.
On the second point, the majority answer is defensible, if taken to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. The order of percentages by which localities were said to be in Roanoke's economic region - Botetourt (65 percent), Franklin (54 percent), Bedford (50 percent) and Montgomery (46 percent) - corresponds more or less to commuting and shopping patterns.
The trouble comes if correct assessments on Points 1 and 2 are tricking Roanokers on Point 3 - if, as seems the case, Christiansburg Mountain is casting too long a shadow for Roanokers to see Tech's importance to their own economic future.
Cities prospering in the late 20th century are state capitals and those with major research universities. (And research universities that are thriving are almost uniformly in or near cities.) Roanoke can't be a state capital. It can, however, adopt Virginia's largest institution of higher education as its own.
It's doubtful that Roanokers are against closer Tech ties; more likely, the idea just hasn't sunk in that a research institution, up on the other side of the mountain, would be a stronger force for good jobs than the kind of manufacturing base the Roanoke Valley once had. But it would.
Topography doesn't change. Fortunately, ideas in people's minds- even when rooted in topography - can.
by CNB