LETTERS: IS THERE A NEW CITY IN THE WORKS?

To the editor:

The Southeast Missourian's recent front-page headline, "City to start on Perryville Road," exemplifies diametrically opposed trends going on in our world today. For example, our earth is in ways shrinking in the sense of becoming more united. Thus, witness the rapid growth of what accurately is called the global economy, the computer revolution, growing democratization and the somewhat increased effectiveness of the United Nations.

Paradoxically, another trend illustrates the opposite: that parts of our world are fragmenting or getting smaller. The term "balkanization" is often used to describe this phenomenon. The splitting apart of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia and the fragmenting of the former Yugoslavia are illustrative of this trend. And so is the matter to which you referred in your aforementioned headline.

I am not writing this letter to try to convince readers which of these trends will win out, is better or anything like that. Far from it.

I simply have a couple of questions. I didn't get an opportunity to read the story accompanying the headline. Thus, I was wondering. Do they plan to incorporate? And have they decided on a name for the city?

STEVE MOSLEY

Cape Girardeau