Read these two articles (one and two)and peruse this list of car friendly cities. Take a moment or two. Synthesize the information. I start, if I’m being honest, with a tremendous, overwhelming feeling of schadenfreude lightly dusted with some righteous indignation and just a hint of despair. Changes in mortality by region due to climate
I understand that the overall concept for the new Union Station includes it being a “park n’ ride” hub for people working in Hartford, New Haven, or metro NYC . Very few may use it for daily commutes, but it may prove useful for the once or twice per week commuter and as such parking
I took a ride through Berkshire, Litchfield, and Putnam counties in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, respectively, on the way to a family get together last weekend. As it was a holiday, we decided to avoid the interstates. The trip was breathtakingly beautiful, but more importantly, it shed light on some of the problems people
Call me gentrifier. I don’t reject the appellation, but depending upon the route I take in describing myself the label could seem a bit odd: I have purchased an old townhouse near the center of the city which could have easily become 3 or even 4 apartments and converted it from an office/apartment combination back
Like the really bad song you can’t stop singing I have to give some credit to a fairly corny and terribly lame story I heard told perhaps 40 years ago but which always springs to mind whenever prevention and remediation are discussed. It had something to do with a mountain town that had a windy
I’m suffering from a bit of cognitive dissonance as I write these words; my generally optimistic perspective and “rose colored glasses” view of my hometown contrasted with my apocalyptic outlook for the American Empire and industrial society. Apart from one obvious exception I see in Springfield a community moving in the right direction and making
I’ve already written a handful of pieces on historic preservation. In my earliest essay bearing directly on the topic I make the argument that economic vitality is the only guarantor of long term historic preservation. In retrospect, and after reading some thoughtful arguments regarding the relationship of growth and historic preservation, I must admit that
The concept of the invisible bike rider has been addressed in multiple venues over the past few months and it has opened my eyes to not just a larger reality but also to some of my own biases. Yesterday as I strolled past Court Square I saw a resplendent cyclist with the bright yellow garb
Publicly available records of official municipal meetings held earlier this year revealed that a local developer intended to acquire and demolish a building, the Shean Block, at the corner of State Street and Main Street in the heart of downtown Springfield. In just the last month MGM announced during a meeting of the State Gaming
I’ve been involved with the issue of pedestrian safety on State Street for more than two decades now so when Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns asked me to snap some pictures of the “desire paths” around and through the fences and hedges the city had “strategically placed” to discourage people from crossing the street at