anyone else got this in their mail box?

Anybody know of comparisons done showing the land use of downtown Utica pre-1930s-50s (before cars became dominant) took over and now? I was struck by how much parking surrounded the train station on my last visit. It almost felt like it had become a 'parking crater'. More on what I'm referring to: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/9/6/how-much-of-your-city-is-parking-lots
I circled all the parking and unused land around the train station, and all the large roads. Thanks in advance for any help.
Utica empty and parking with arterials

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The presidential portrait of Philip F. La Follette, painted by an old acquaintance from his days as a federal soldier in the Revolution.
Seeking a third term to finish his construction of a new dawn for the republic once and for all, incumbent President Philip La Follette has rallied his supporters within the party to almost guarantee his renomination after four years of intraparty purges of his detractors following his narrow triumph over John L. Lewis in 1948. Yet, inspired by former Vice President Lena Morrow Lewis’s deathbed plea to “save our party’s democratic soul,” burgeoning efforts from within statewide opposition groups have sought to mount opposition from within the presidential nominating process as a means of reconquering state parties.
Philip F. La Follette: The heir to one of the nation’s great political dynasties, Philip Fox La Follette would emerge from the Great War and Revolution as a war hero, a reputation that, with his last name, would carry the once outspokenly anti-war young man to the Governor’s office, Lindbergh’s Supreme Court, and finally the upper echelons of the Army, where his ability to avoid taking positions on controversial issues would win him the Farmer-Labor nomination for the presidency in 1944–and finally the White House itself. Alienating much of his constituency from the outset with his determination to prosecute the war effort to its fullest, La Follette would respond to the battlefield use of two atomic weapons by Japan with a series of nuclear strikes upon the Japanese mainland that would claim final victory for the United States at the cost of the lives of over two million Japanese civilians. Appointing General Douglas MacArthur, hardly a Farmer-Laborite, as Secretary of State, La Follette has pursued the rebuilding and rearmament of a ring of anti-communist nations in Asia while pledging to avoid any future war.
Declaring that, with the age of war having closed, the republic must “win the peace,” La Follette allied himself with much of Charles Lindbergh’s base of support, saluting alongside the fascists of Alabama as he presided over the sharpest GDP growth in American history and buoyed it with executive orders to nationalize the healthcare industry while engaging in the mass sterilization of Americans and constructing an interstate highway system and hydroelectric power grid without congressional approval. With an investigation into the disappearance of Smedley Butler yielding evidence of an assassination organized under former President Lindbergh and a litany of arrests of leading anti-La Follette figures stuning the nation, the opposition would unite in an unprecedented impeachment effort.
Now, months after having saved his presidency from the first impeachment in American history, 55 year old incumbent President Philip F. La Follette has sought a new mandate for his call to “win the peace” in a quest for a third term; further, the President has taken his first major post-impeachment use of executive power to reorganize the cabinet into umbrella departments of Peace, Production, and Prosperity. Pointing to the successful slaying of the dragon of inflation and the first space launches in human history, Phil has sought the passage of a constitutional amendment reducing the legislative power to that of a veto and expanding that of the presidency while instituting a nationwide referendum system. Although practically guaranteed renomination after his purging of opponents from national power within Farmer-Labor following his narrow 1948 triumph over John L. Lewis, La Follette’s re-envisioning of Farmer-Labor has nonetheless continued to fuel a dogged but disorganized opposition movement despite the winning over of former opponents such as Washington’s Scoop Jackson, who nearly mounted a bid against La Follette himself.
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Alf Landon campaigning in New York with the widow of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Norman Thomas.
Nationwide Opposition Candidates:
With efforts to discourage any opposition campaigns in full swing, only one major figure has stepped forth to win ballot access in most states continuing to hold primaries, although many states have seen independent organizing efforts in tandem with the shared ultimate goal of the demise of fascism.
Alf Landon: 65 year old former President Alf Landon has his cross to bear. Refusing to endorse against Charles Lindbergh after withdrawing from the party’s 1936 primaries, Landon’s inaction as his 1932 campaign manager Rush Holt put Lindbergh over the line would see the Lone Eagle’s flight path on a course to the White House, from where he would crush the remaining loyal Landonites in the midterm elections of 1938. Landon emerged triumphant in 1928 by pitching his moderation as a formula for long term Farmer-Labor dominance of government, only to see the party implode under his watch. Losing the popular vote only to win a contingent election via the machinations of Clarence Dill, Landon's presidency proved eventful, most notable, perhaps for its domestic inaction. While concentrating his focus upon the Molotov-Lundeen Pact establishing friendly diplomatic relations with the Soviet government in Russia, a policy Landon championed as the catalyst for the wide scale withdrawal of foreign forces from American soil, Landon would cut economic aid across the board and refuse to bail out banks & big business in the face of record unemployment rates following the worldwide depression brought on by the collapse of the Japanese economic bubble, while focusing on driving up interest rates to control inflation.
Pitted against a hostile Congress led by Clarence Dill, the man whose legislative acumen carried him to the White House and who now stands as La Follette’s loyal Secretary of Peace, Landon found much of his party arrayed against him in the face of a veto of the Thomas Bill nationalizing natural gas distribution & the telephone industry despite prior promises from Landon to support both proposals. With the complete breakdown of legislative-executive relations, Dill forced through the Recovery Act of 1931, the largest omnibus bill in American history, enacting vast economic reforms over the disgruntlement of Landon. Winning the primaries of 1932 in a landslide, only to lose at the convention in the face of the backroom dealings of Clarence Dill, Landon would fail in a 1936 comeback attempt that would inadvertently pave the way to fascism.
In partisan exile, Landon would unsuccessfully organize against President Lindbergh, only to watch his followers be resoundingly defeated in the midterm elections of 1938; finding himself at the upper echelons of power anew as an unofficial negotiator with the United Kingdom under President Luce, Landon would organize political comeback in 1945 by winning election to the United States Senate after the death of George Norris. Working from there on policy issues such as advocacy of the Parliament of Nations and support for presidential programs such as the Interstate Highway system, Landon and his remaining caucus of conservatives have been at the fore of anti-La Follette intraparty organizing from the campaign of John L. Lewis to the movement for impeachment. Throwing his hat into the ring once more, Landon has used his stature to argue that only his brand of moderation can resurrect the Farmer-Labor of old as a viable party independent of the control of the fascists brought to power by his own neglect.
Robert A. Heinlein: Launched to international fame as the senior naval officer during the American attack on Pearl Harbor, 45-year-old former Commodore Robert A. Heinlein has used the events of December 7th, 1941 as a springboard for a lucrative career as a science fiction author. Emphasizing scientific accuracy in novels with titles such as Red Planet and Rocket Ship Galileo, Heinlein would step from the military and literary arenas to the political at the urging of his publisher James Laughlin and associate Ezra Pound, the poet and former New York Governor who has attempted to revive the American social credit movement. In turn, with Laughlin, Pound, and office holders such as Senators Hans Wight and John Horne Blackmore and Representative Solon Earl Low in tow, Heinlein has capitalized on his war hero stature to campaign for the presidency entirely unrelated to those of every other candidate campaigning against La Follette and instead intended to revitalite the American social credit movement.
Falling curiously between the social credit wing of Farmer-Labor and radicals of the Liberty League, Heinlein has described himself as a libertarian while supporting a social credit monetary system balancing a nationalized monetary supply with a requirement of a 100% reserve on money lending as described in his seminal novel For Us, The Living; further, he has coupled his experience in the Navy with his science fiction work to argue that he is uniquely able to continue President La Follette’s attempts to reach for the stars through a space program and argued for a currency backed by the very goods owned by the government itself. A firm believer in the concept of a national draft and a militarist at heart, Heinlein has resurrected positions such as support for the repeal of the Jesus Amendment, the concomitant secularization of the United States government, and support for a constitutional amendment requiring a national referendum prior to any declaration of war resulting in the drafting of supporters.
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Reliving his military days with a uniform on the campaign trail, the President visited a zoo to greet flocks of koalas.
Regional Opposition Candidates:
With opposition Farmer-Labor organizations persisting around the nation and fighting to recapture control of their state parties, anti-La Follette factions across the nation have rallied around regional candidates in states permitting competitive primaries in an attempt to rise the tide of the down ballot opposition. Thus, all of the following candidates are only on the ballots of one or several states.
John Haynes Holmes: 73 year old Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes served as a leading advisor to William Jennings Bryan, guiding the post-revolutionary nation through the unsteady waters of foreign occupation as he used the White House pulpit to preach his gospel of pacifist socialism. Playing a key role in the pardons of former revolutionaries, Holmes would serve in Alf Landon’s inaugural diplomatic delegation to Bolshevik Russia before reluctantly supporting Charles Lindbergh for his opposition to war with Japan. Nonetheless, a consistent opponent of fascism from his days as a seminary student denouncing young Governor Milford W. Howard’s new order in Alabama, Holmes has been a consistent bulwark in the struggle against the party’s fascist wing, renouncing President La Follette once it became clear that he would not end the Third Pacific War and using the word impeachment as early as the atomic bombings of 1945, which Holmes has denounced as a violation of the Jesus Amendment. Running on restoring the party’s former core of Christian socialism, Holmes has been put forth across New England as the flag bearer of the opposition.
Sid McMath: Hoisting the banner of opposition across the Deep South and Southwest is 40 year old Arkansas Senator Sid McMath. Primarying longtime incumbent Farmer-Laborite Garrett Whiteside in 1948 only to face off against the organization of Progressive strategist Osro Cobb, known as the “wizard of Arkansas” for his success in what was once the nation’s most Farmer-Laborite state, McMath would win an upset victory running on his record as a war hero and ties to Smedley Butler and Evans Fordyce Carlson. Horrified at revelations of the murder of Butler by the Lindbergh Administration, McMath would vote for the removal of Philip La Follette after a midnight visit from his former commanding officer in the Marine Corps David Shoup, transforming himself from an enigma to a pariah overnight as fascists across the nation have descended upon Arkansas to challenge him in 1954, with La Follette forces already organizing behind challenger Orval Faubus in a move that has placed McMath in an unexpected alliance with former rival Osro Cobb.
Jimmy Hoffa: 39 year old labor leader Jimmy Hoffa inherited the mantle of leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from longtime President John L. Lewis after the arrest of Lewis and his deputy Tony Boyle. A moderate with sympathies to both the party’s right and left seen as balancing with fellow CIO leader Walter Reuther’s socialism, Hoffa has put the interests of labor above all from his days leading the Teamsters Union. A fiery speaker who many credit with saving the CIO from collapse after the arrest of its leonine leader, Hoffa’s name is only on three ballots, but he has emerged as the choice of handfuls of CIO-affiliated delegates across the nation as a protest vote against the continued nationalization of the General Trades Union.
Jerry Voorhis: The Senate’s sole member from the Single Tax Party, California’s Jerry Voorhis has nonetheless served as the lightning rod around which disparate California anti-La Follette Farmer-Laborites have organized owing to the state ordinances permitting political crossfiling. Having described “the Kingdom of God” as being a world “all producing wealth is owned publicly” in his Claremont University thesis, Voorhis would oppose President Lindbergh from the beginning as a Farmer-Labor socialist before joining the Single Tax Party in 1946, reviving it in the state of California in an attempt to find a new vehicle for his politics. Seen as a contender for the presidency regardless of party affiliation, Voorhis’s draft movement among California oppositionists has been heralded as the first step of the left wing knight’s hypothetical return to a rebuilt Farmer-Labor Party. Among his surprising supporters has been former Lindbergh-La Follette stalwart Reverend Robert P. Shuler, who has praised Voorhis for crossing ideological and party lines to defend his right to free speech in moralistic attacks on Henry Luce’s romantic life.
Frank P. Zeidler: 40 year old Wisconsin Governor Frank P. Zeidler has stood as a socialist in the heart of La Follette country, successfully resisting primary challenges to maintain his grasp on the office amidst a tenuous alliance with Joseph McCarthy. Entering politics following the death of his rising star brother Carl, Frank has accepted the ballot line of the opposition in several Midwestern states following the death of former Senator Herbert S. Bigelow, once anticipated as a socialist challenger himself. A socialist to the core, Zeidler supporters point to his history of fiscal success and balanced budgets as evidence of his acumen in economic management and ability to control inflation as a possible future chief executive.
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https://preview.redd.it/s6ujsa51ez1d1.png?width=496&format=png&auto=webp&s=8a9780bae64c274464986caddc33b009b7c6dff8
The Primaries:
The quixotic challenge of former President Landon would find itself in a surprise competition for national attention with a handful of local efforts sponsored by opposition groups unable to connect themselves nationally. Meanwhile, in an expected turn of events, Robert A. Heinlein would carry the primaries in strongly pro-social credit Shoshone and Vancouver, a respectable showing that has set the war hero and author up solidly for leadership of a social credit bid for party leadership in 1956. Similarly, the success of Jerry Voorhis in California would surprise primary observers and fuel rumblings of a possible 1956 movement.
Among the opening primaries, a lightning bolt would land directly into the La Follette campaign as Arkansas Senator Sid McMath, hardly taken seriously as a challenger by the Administration, won 59.6% in the Florida primary. Scrambling for a response, La Follette would win the uncompetitive South Carolina primary but lose Louisiana by ten points and McMath’s own Arkansas by thirty. With McMath gaining steam across the South, he would nonetheless falter in North Carolina amidst bickering between left and right wing opponents of La Follette that would tear apart his organization in the state and reveal a lack of strong support from anti-La Follette Senator Charles A. Jonas, who would mount a campaign for Alf Landon and leave La Follette to win the state with 54.3% of the vote to a mere 36.1% for McMath. Although McMath would retort with a razor thin victory in Mississippi the next week, focusing on the bread and butter of economic issues rather than rivalry with La Follette, he would soon find several members of his Senate staff indicted on corruption charges. Nonetheless, he would continue his surprising streak with an overwhelming victory in Georgia, combining the Appalachian miners of the north with the urban left of Atlanta and its darling Senator Ellis Arnall for 58.8% in the state’s primary, alongside a surprising 47.1% showing in Alabama with the support of oppositionist Senator Jim Folsom.
As Landon inherited the conservative labor support of John L. Lewis, and with it success in the coal country of the Border South, he would displace a faltering John Haynes Holmes in the state of New York and attempt to present a united front by campaigning alongside Norman Thomas, a strategy that would bring the former President to his most surprising victory, with 51.4% of the vote to 42.9% for President La Follette and 5.3% for Robert A. Heinlein despite the support of former Governor Ezra Pound. The sole exception would be Michigan, where favorite son Jimmy Hoffa would stand on his only primary ballot.
However, the Midwest would present other issues for President La Follette. From the plains of his birth to the industrial Midwest to the south and east, socialist Governor Frank Zeidler would win significant support. Locked out of the Houston, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois primaries, Zeidler would nonetheless carry Ohio with 52.1% of the vote and the endorsement of dying Herbert S. Bigelow, adding to his roster Dakota, home state of campaign manager George McGovern. Although coming in an expected second to the incumbent President in their shared home state, Zeidler’s 40.1% showing in Wisconsin, and 3.4% given to former Speaker of the House Joseph McCarthy as a write-in, would raise alarm bells in the President’s home even as he swept the nation.
Nonetheless, La Follette would present a convincing showing of his own for an incumbent President in his quest for a third term, sweeping primaries such as those of Washington and New England against spirited campaigns for the opposition from such men as John Haynes Holmes and, in cautious support of Zeidler, Marion Zioncheck. Thus, despite carrying a smaller share of the national popular vote in comparison to 1948’s battle for the soul of Farmer-Labor, La Follette would emerge from the primaries with a supermajority of the delegates and the path to re-election clearly paved by certain renomination.

Philip F. La Follette	763
Jerry Voorhis	371
Robert A. Heinlein	47
Jimmy Hoffa	16
Alf Landon	11
Sid McMath	13
Frank Zeidler	8

The Convention:
To many, the gathering of one and a half thousand delegates in Philadelphia was meant not as a convention, but as a coronation. Yet, dedicated members of the opposition would refuse to let yet another expected loss in another round of political battle stop them. With tens of thousands mulling about Philadelphia’s Civic Center, the expensive venue that presidential loyalists had insisted on as a means to draw ties to the immortal location of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, oppositionists would gather in the lobby of the Philadelphia Marriott to organize a united front around California Senator Jerry Voorhis in an attempt to bridge divides among the Farmer-Labor opposition and, for appearance’s sake, at the least, to change the depiction of the anti-Phil movement as one of united purpose rather than disparate regional interests.
If the 14,000 in attendance for the convention did not already make delegates packed into the convention hall feel as if they were in a can of sardines, the prying eyes of hundreds of Blackshirts standing guard made the skin of oppositionists crawl, for if looks could kill, Sid McMath would later muse on the televised Longines Chronoscope, every opposition man would be left as dead as canned sardines. After the carnage of the 1948 convention, broadcast to a million American homes over radio, the now loyal machinery of the Farmer-Labor Party was determined to maintain the first televised convention in American political history as their coronation, not the opposition’s competition. In an unprecedented move that communicated clearly the hostility towards anti-La Follette elements from the new doyens of party leadership, Blackshirts had been formally contracted by the National Committee to serve as security.
Indeed, if looks could kill, Frank Zeidler would have been shot dead by none other than Convention Chairman Burton K. Wheeler as the Wisconsin Governor ascended to the podium to enter the name of Jerry Voorhis as a candidate for the presidency, showing the hand of the opposition’s united front. As Zeidler denounced the third term campaign as “the next phase of a national effort to subvert the will of the people,” jeering Blackshirts would shout back “who won?” in reference to Phil’s twenty five point lead in the popular vote. Over the shouts of opponents, Zeidler would denounce La Follette’s urban planning policies, noting as Governor his distaste for the “iron ring of suburbs” surrounding Milwaukee.
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Demonstrators allied with the Zeidler campaign demonstrate with signs promoting socialist New York Congressman Norman Thomas.
Sid McMath would rise next to second the nomination of the opposition’s standard bearer, asking delegates of President La Follette, “how will this man be measured when weighed in the scales of freedom in the world?” Continuing, the Arkansan would declare that “The concepts of freedom, equality of opportunity, and dignity for all people are the basis and bulwark of our national pride and our nation’s strength. America’s instinct for equal rights under the law for all citizens is the underlying force that binds us together. America’s conscience dictates that justice is the moral essence of the law. Fires of freedom are burning, ignited by the precepts proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States…they shall not be extinguished.” McMath would not turn to the upturned noses of the Blackshirt guards, but to the dozens of television cameras positioned across from him. Understanding acutely that neither he nor his compatriots were to win this day, Senator McMath was not addressing the voting delegates assembled before him but the voting masses of the nation. Confident in that assertion, Sid McMath would hold his head high as he left the stage, the cheers of supporters carrying his heart over the din of hisses and insults.
President La Follette would not take the stage until Voorhis had been voted down, animated counters on the television screen announcing to the world his triumph. For the first time in American history, a President had been impeached. For the first time in American history, a President had survived impeachment. Now, for the first time in American history, a President had consecutively won renomination for a third term. Secretary of Production Ralph Immell would later recount a smile upon Phil’s face as the news came through, joining 16 year old Sherry for a hug and beckoning over First Lady Isen and his older children. The larger than life man so often plastered with the title dictator would caress a photo of his family from before the war, from before the presidency, and would take a deep breath as he left his private room to greet the throngs of admirers.
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The First Family shown in a photo from 1941 treasured by the President.
The President’s speech would be brief, listing a challenge to the Federal Reserve as among his third term goals and rebutting allegations of authoritarianism by arguing that he held the reformist soul at the heart of Farmer-Labor. Promising loyalty to “the life of democracy,” Phil would describe his Administration as “investigating problems very thoroughly, whether it be a depression amongst farmers, or unemployment. Out of this, shall we say scientific investigation of problems, we seek after remedies.” Nonetheless, Phil would stand by granting "the Executive branch power to get things done and restore to every American the opportunity to help himself. After that, he can sink or swim,” and reiterate his admiration for Milford W. Howard’s fascism with a nod to the Alabama delegation. Noticing shouts from opponents in Norman Thomas’s New York and a sign hoisted by Landon delegates from Nebraska, President La Follette would look from the delegates to the cameras to defend his leadership.
“Over thirty years have passed since that unhappy day when the American people, blinded by promises made by those at home and abroad, forgot the highest values of our past, of the Republic, of its honor and its freedom, and thereby lost everything at Tegucigalpa. After those days of treason, discord and hatred moved in.
America, since the day the revolution broke out, was a picture of heartbreaking disunity. We did not receive the equality and fraternity which was promised us; instead we lost our freedom. The breakdown of the unity of mind and will of our nation at home was followed by the collapse of its political position abroad. American freedom is rooted in American abundance. Let me emphasize the statement that no free nation can remain half at work and half idle. Howardism was an explosion against these intolerable conditions.
We overcame class and class warfare. I do not recognize classes, but only the American people. I therefore appeal now to the American people to stand for Americanism against autocratic dictatorship and economic tyranny. The La Follette Administration will complete the great task of reorganizing our national economy, saving the American worker, and saving the American farmer. The Administration has worked and will work for victory not merely in the brutality of war, but in peace as well. We have no desire to fight for ourselves; only for the United States of America.
As we won the war, I appeal to you once more, let us win the peace.”
As Blackshirts below ripped signs of protest from the hands of the opposition, the President of the United States would end his address with a barb, characterizing his opponents as “machine minded organization without principle or program.” Looking into the eyes of delegates who wished him dead, La Follette would defiantly declare that “definitely and irrevocably, we are here to stay as American people reclaim their heritage,” before closing with a final imploration to “win the peace.”
Four years ago John L. Lewis had declared that “the hour of labor’s redemption” had arrived. Today, John L. Lewis closed his eyes in a prison cell a thousand miles away as hundred foot banners of George Washington rose in the convention hall that labor had ruled two decades ago. Alongside Washington rose equally prominent banners of Philip La Follette, speakers blasted a folk rendition of the campaign anthem “Vote for Phil” from convention hall into ten million television sets and from thousands joined chants of “Phil! Phil! Phil!” accompanied by the salute of Rome and its empire, of Howard and his fascism, today of La Follette and the peace to be won. Whatever November might bring for Philip La Follette, his hour of triumph was at hand.
“Hail victory!”
A tall banner of George Washington shortly before similar banners of President La Follette were placed around him.
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