At the top of the list presented by the Southern Strategy committee — made up of city, county, School Board and planning staff — is speeding up the widening of Capital Circle, the traffic artery surrounding most of the city. Other recommendations included discouraging unattractive public projects — or LULUs, locally unwanted land uses — that are disproportionately located in the southern part of the county.

Against these threats we can pose our own evolving vocabulary of barefoot epidemiology (community-based health monitoring), community and workplace right-to-know, toxic torts (the wrongful acts of polluters), compensable injuries (such as sexual harrassment), source reduction (of pollution), "lulus" (locally unwanted land uses), "nimby" (not in my backyard).