Read about it and weep: http://foekuranda.org/info/modules/content/index.php?id=17

Do we really still need to be fighting these silly battles against Mammon in 2007? Apparently so.

Anyhow, back to norries. I also saw the amazing ABC Foreign Correspondent program about how Cambodians have taken back their railways and put them to work. Simple, human-scale, adaptable and artistic - and not reliant on government or corporations. Sweet!

The lightly-populated Myola Valley, at present, is served by a road and a railway line. The railway, however, is barely used. Norries, IMO, are the perfect solution for a community with a substantial indigenous component, fed up waiting for the Government to revitalize rail, when it clearly has minimal interest in doing so. It can only think ‘big rail’.

Enter norries - a decentralized solution to facilitating regular rail services, affordable and not requiring high population densities for viability. That might just work here…

I look forward to the day when Myola, as an early southern-hemisphere adopter, has norries that are widely-respected for artistic merit, safety and ecologically responsible design.

A couple of questions. How can we get the state off our backs so we (the people) can make effective re-use of our public rail easements? I have some idea how this occurred in Cambodia. We need a less painful solution. And what is the most feasible zero-emissions technology to power norries?

also makes you realize that the people of ‘undeveloped’ countries are definitely world leaders when it comes to this whole adaptive reuse thing. its a curious thing because while ‘environmental consciousness’ may not be that high, economic necessity demands that everything that can be reused is reused, (for example in Mexico City their are markets where you can buy all sorts of things that have be dug out of the tip). And when it comes to transport anything with wheels is used to move all manner of things around.

I’m a bit of a resistor to the car when it comes to my own transportation, so i lug all sorts of things around on my bike (including almost everything i use to make my work). I guess there’s part of me that enjoys the looks that i get from people who drive past when I’m pushing timber-laden bike down the street, but then i think, if i was in Mexico people wouldn’t even look twice.

there’s more on “the special period” (after the soviet union collapsed) in Cuba at this website. (http://www.communitysolution.org/solution.html) the power-point presentation (”Cuba; a peak oil country”) goes through some of the adaptions Cuba has had to make as a country since that time.