Don't know, Scott. It just seems everyone has stopped reading the Roanoke forum and contributing to it.

Maybe vdogg, who is the moderator, has an explanation of why the Roanoke pages are so empty.

Personally, I think it's a trend. Fewer and fewer people are actiive on UrbanPlanet. The Hampton Roads forums and Richmond, too, are nowhere near as busy as they used to be. Maybe it's the proliferation of blogs and social networking.

What's happened to this Roanoke forum? I've never posted here but I used to always read the topics and posts years before, but now it seems pretty much dead. Anyone still around?

For a decade Forest has been one of Bedford County's -- as well as the region's -- fastest-growing areas. Houses, town homes and condominiums, and churches have supplanted farmland and hayfields. Now, the area on the county's eastern fringe is experiencing a commercial boom.

Bulldozers are scraping the grass off fields, laborers are hoisting cinder blocks and stores are opening. The newly suburban enclave is rapidly maturing into an urban area, seemingly impervious to the recession and its aftereffects.

"That's the one area of the county where, through the economic crisis, we've seen some commercial projects," said county planner Jordan Mitchell, adding that the development is in line with the county's plans. "Business growth is what we want.".............



"Everybody's so worried about the recession, they're waiting for things to change," Phelps said. "But it's my belief that things already have changed."

But on weekends especially, the Roanoke River Greenway is getting crowded with many people exercising in different ways on a single narrow asphalt ribbon.For that reason, the Roanoke Valley Greenways Commission has a video about greenway etiquette on its Web site, greenways.org that you can see here below.

There's a large sign in Smith Park listing general rules. Oddly, the type is so tiny you can't read it from the path.

The commission also distributed business card-size "dos and don'ts" along with warning bells for cyclists at its inaugural Greenways Festival on June 12.

Marshall said the commission met Thursday and approved two special projects for the region: $5 million for photovoltaic cell manufacturing at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and $5 million for a project that entails designing a new type of tire at Virginia International Raceway.

The project at the Institute will entail building small photovoltaic cells that will be grouped on panels and used on roofs to collect solar power, Marshall said.

Marshall said General Motors, Goodyear and Virginia Tech will join forces at VIR to produce a new tire design that will increase a vehicle’s mileage by between three and five miles per gallon.

Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic announced a partnership to bring a medical school to Roanoke in January 2007. It was the brainchild of Virginia Tech President Charles Steger and Carilion CEO Dr. Ed Murphy..........



A week of orientation for the first class of 42 students will begin Aug. 2. Classes begin in earnest the week after that, although Johnson said students will begin learning from real medical cases the moment they walk through the door.

VTC is the 131st medical school in the U.S. and Canada offering a doctor of medicine degree that has received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.