Mike’s Place

Today, the entire family (including my two year old, wife, her parents, her brother, her sister, and her sister’s husband) met for a fun day at Prospect Park. I’d never been to the park before, so was looking forward to something new.

We took 95 down to 278 to Tillary to Flatbush and parked (for free) at the corner of Ocean and Parkside (near Wollman Rink). The parking lot was newly paved and lacked markings, so people were a little liberal with their parking locations. We almost got blocked in, so many cars had gotten in there by the time we were leaving.

The park was really nice. We walked down around the lake and eventually got to the Children’s Corner (to the carousel). Mostly we just went to have a picnic and hang out with family. We were just looking for a nice time with everyone and were blessed with the beautiful weather.

One of my favorite things is Urban Planning. I know, it doesn’t sound sexy does it? All wrapped up with that are topics like land use, road development, and politics (particularly at the local level). In a place like Connecticut, with 169 home-rule towns, regional planning of any sort can be difficult and inter-city rivalries are almost the norm.

I once heard that planning like this needs to happen on the scale commiserate with the distance one commutes on a daily basis. I commute almost 50 miles each way (I’m sure I’m way on the longer side of this) and go through a dozen towns. Do you think that they are all cooperating to make sure that there are alternative transportation sources available?

Here are a couple interesting sites:

Kurumi

CT Transit Links

Walkable Streets