Picture;Tomas Brusell (Water Colour,1998)
I was invited to participate in a democratic hearing where
politicians and lobbyists wanted to listen to ordinary people,
and hear us express our meanings about how to develop our town
- Kongsberg, once the main silver producer in Europe, today
a high tech oriented industrial community, where many of the
companies are formidable export successes.
The powerful growth of the Norwegian economy is correlated
to the growth of companies like Kongsberg Gruppen with
operating revenues increasing from MNOK1998 (1995) to
MNOK 4679 (1998). In the same time the number of employees
in the group has grown from 2049 to 3333,
( >30% in less than five years! ).
Industrial enterprise thus is the economical motor of the local
community and a basic fact to consider for the participants
in the democratic process.
Kongsberg is in addition to this the number seven Norwegian
winter resort with almost perfect snowboarding conditions
at Funkelia ( large numbers of
visitors come from
outside the commune), no wonder then, that logistics was
number one on the democratic agenda, due to the depressing
fact that the narrow European Route 134 between Oslo and
Haugesund, is long gone outgrown and must be reconstructed.
Tunnel or not? Passage to the north or more to the south? Outside
or inside down town?...floods of questions and meanings.
Audun Offerdal and Jacob Aars of the Bergen University
coordinated the meeting and managed with elegance and
intellectual professionalism to get the politicians and commune
bureaucrats to keep a low profile while we, ordinary people, were
inspired to open up and express ourselves.
A pity then, that the State and the central transportation bureaucrats,
have been unable to solve the financial problems concerning
the E 134 and realize the needs of the citizens of Kongsberg.
Due to this, we locals had to lose (inspired!) energy on the
problems of planning a (rather trivial but expensive) highway-
mega-structure instead of addressing the soft traffic problems
and housing of down town Kongsberg with full concentration.
Practical Democracy is a multi level project and as such heavily
depending not only on the Industry, the Retailers and the Tourists
but most certainly on the Military, whose Kongsberg spokesmen,
to my astonishment, were absent this time.
Tomas Brusell
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