There’s a park here in town that I like. It has some nice trails- a couple of nice dirt trails for bikes and horses, a BMX track, and even a long paved trail for kids bikes, skateboards, joggers, walkers… you get the idea. There are lakes and meadows, playgrounds and parking lots. Even a disc golf course. It’s very fine, and we’re very lucky to have it. During the last economic boom, one of the major ‘development’ players tried to get the local government to hand the north edge of the park over to him for development, and that was horrifying. But worse is the fact that a lot of moneyed people live to the East of the park, while most of their jobs are on the West of the park. That leads to a lot of high-powered commuters pissed off because they’re trying to get to their jobs and the park is in the damned way. There are always plans to carve up the park (which runs on both sides of the main road thereabouts) to make commutes easier. The defeat of those plans will, of course, go on until the park is ruined- all it takes is one big setback and the park will begin it’s slide into oblivion. The fight to save the park sometimes includes editorial cartoons like the one below, which I did for a group working to save the park.
One wonders why folks that work downtown wouldn’t want to live a little closer to it, but that’s a whole ‘nother can o’ worms.
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