[VBbuilders] 2nd Russia videobridge adress today

[Franz Nahrada]

(at a moscow conference organized by BASEL - basic elements corporation,
200.000 employees)
we had technical problems with the videolink though, too many peaople on
the wifi in the hotel
see the first one at http://www.dorfwiki.org/wiki.cgi?VideoBridge/Pikalevo

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good morning - or should I say good afternoon, since you are ahead of
us….

I am Franz Nahrada from Vienna, future researcher and networker.

I am very excited to hear that the small and medium towns of Russia came
together to discuss their structural problems. We here in Austria observe
very keenly what is going on in Russia, especially since we have so guests
from Russia now ;-)

I think that maybe not our beautiful mountains are interesting, but also
the beautiful composition of big city, small towns, villages and
countryside

They form a very essential interconnected system

Much attention has been spent on the big cities and their problems, and
also at the other end of the spectrum we have had village renewal and many
ppograms for rural areas

But very rarely we became aware of the small towns as the centerpiece of
the system, that are a link between the functionality of their
"Hinterland" and the offerings that mostly still emerge in the big cities

We at ECOVAST (European council of Villages and small towns) have started
a program to look at these small towns, and take action to strengthen them.
because they are the most important joint bones in the overall structure
of our social space.

Without them, rural life would be impossible

Now I see that the towns that you are representing were not primarily
designed as maintainance centers for a region, but as part of a vast
interconnected industrial network

But now, as this network is facing the enormous structural changes in the
global economy, with increased competition overproduction, full
automation, wage dumping and all that….

It might be wise to consider a transformation of small and medium towns to
take full advantage of some of the lesser visible advantages of
globalisation.

This is by the way the only way to save the national cohesion also - by
giving all people good opportunities of life!!

This lesser visible advantage I am talking about is the enormous amount of
knowhow and technologies that enable us to act locally, diversify, do more

In fact more than ever industry does not only produce consumer goods, it
also produces tools hat empower us to do more different things than we
ever could do before on a local level.

I hope you will look into this possibility and the new economic 
circulations that can be created.

thank you!

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://globalvillages.org/pipermail/videobridgebuilders/attachments/20120306/d3f3d468/attachment.html>