***SPAM*** Re: Re: NP: Ad Coelum

[Smoke Teff]

Well a broad overview makes it sound like this idea ad coelum idea (that
property ownership extends infinitely upward and downward) starts creeping
into western consciousness (or at least into recorded/mythologized
discourse) around the 1200s, becomes fundamental to most people's notion of
property law after that...

Related to the discussions of humanism around here, I wonder if there's
some relevance to this new 13-c idea that the reach of man's dominion is
spatially infinite, at least in this one dimension...

And also wondering if that's not a kind of precursor to later
species-psychic developments Pynchon guides us toward (GR: "Pirate for a
few seconds there, waiting to talk to Stanmore, was thinking, Danger’s
over, Banana Breakfast is saved. But it’s only a reprieve. Isn’t it. There
will indeed be others, each just as likely to land on top of him. No one
either side of the front knows exactly how many more. Will we have to stop
watching the sky?”)



In a telling irony, or maybe paradox, it seems like the 'ad coelum'
doctrine starts to lose favor only as it starts becoming especially legally
relevant. It seems like this really starts after the advent of manned
balloon flight in 1783. It also comes at the tail end of a weird period of
a few hundred years of stalled architectural progress (at least in terms of
verticality), in which the tallest building in the world keeps getting
shorter as the title-holders aren't beaten by new buildings but by their
own collapsing. But then steel-frame construction is just around the
corner...





On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:21 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree that such density of old and its community is wonderful.  That is
> the goal of New Ubanism.  But towers are inevitable, unless outlawed. And
> we have conflated residential versus business uses.  And this all started
> with an air-rights discussion.  So, as I said before, setbacks were a
> public good established in the 20's, and air rights are their result.
>
> Air above property ain't free, but it can be regulated.  This is a fertile
> topic.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 4:54 PM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The low, but densely-populated tenement buildings my parents grew up in
>> (8-10 people crammed into 4-5 small rooms) necessitated a spilling out of
>> life onto fire escapes, hallways and streets. Even in the less-dense, but
>> poorly-wired apartment of my childhood, all of these spaces were fully
>> utilized. It created a vibrant neighborhood, particularly in the summer.
>>
>> The vertical monstrosities, often barely populated, take up space without
>> creating community. The greenest building is a vacant building. Mass
>> transportation and walk-to shopping are the greenest aspects of any
>> populous city. Fortunately, those are still defining aspects of life in NYC.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> *Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID*
>>
>>
>> David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Small town urbanism is the not so new vogue called "New Urbanism."  It's
>> a great model for developing or recovering towns and cities up to a point,
>> unless one wants to limit vertical growth as in DC, which has no
>> skyscrapers so as to not compete with the Capital or White House, a
>> questionable goal.
>>
>> But denser development is inevitable for less regulated hot cities, and
>> it should be noted that denser cities are inherently more green.  So
>> "lovely" urban row houses is an ideal that is akin to a suburban ranch
>> house.  Nice in a very dense city if you are very rich.  And density is a
>> good goal.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 1:56 PM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Some of the loveliest blocks in the city are those with row-houses,
>>> brownstones, row-houses and otherwise, residential or commercial of uniform
>>> height. I'd take an entire city of such blocks (though zoning - which has
>>> steadily weakened, due to the real estate lobby - prevents this). The
>>> developers who buy air rights have anything but aesthetics in mind. It's
>>> strictly bang-for-buck, as they erect sky-scraping phalli that are often
>>> mostly-unoccupied investment properties, or, if occupied, renege on their
>>> affordable housing obligations, and/or try to keep the luxury investors
>>> happy with poor doors, etc.
>>>
>>> What I hate most about these luxury high-rises is that they're designed
>>> with high maintenance costs in mind. So the ability to re-purpose these
>>> buildings to lower-income housing, should the investment bubble burst, is
>>> virtually zilch. Ditto for the high-rise office buildings, whose developers
>>> seem extremely unaware of the growing trend towards telecommuting from
>>> one's favorite wifi spot.
>>>
>>> LK
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 2:18 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> FREE THE AIR SPACE!
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>>
>>>
>>>> On Apr 14, 2017, at 11:11 AM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The concept of air rights in NYC - that a short building can sell it's
>>>> "air space" to a larger building that wants to build higher than it would
>>>> be allowed to - strikes me as illogical and larcenous. All hail the real
>>>> estate developers!
>>>>
>>>> http://www.airrightsny.com/?m=1
>>>>
>>>> Laura
>>>>
>>>> *Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey y’all,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I’m working on an essay right now that deals a little with questions of
>>>> property law, specifically this ad coelum doctrine (idea that land
>>>> ownership extends infinitely upward and downward), set against the larger
>>>> notion of the human’s relationship to the sky, the politics of public space
>>>> on an airplane, some other things…
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If any of you have any particularly interesting/relevant information or
>>>> thoughts to send my way, I’d be interested. Especially things that might
>>>> shed some light on the extent to which this was actually a new idea
>>>> whenever it first gets supposedly uttered (Wikipedia says some people
>>>> credit a 13th century Roman scholar named Accursus), the extent to
>>>> which it represents an evolution in a living person’s public understanding
>>>> of property ownership/rights at the time, the details around its becoming
>>>> understood embraced versus becoming officially codified in rule of law,
>>>> maybe even the evolution of how a human thinks about such things like the
>>>> sky, the ground, etc... (you might get the sense here I’m trying to get a
>>>> sense of the human’s sense of frontiers, the way the human first *sees
>>>> *a space and sees it as colonizable/ownable…)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> One thing I’m trying to understand is the spirit and political context
>>>> in which this first makes its way into the public’s imagination, perhaps
>>>> maybe wondering how it might be understood against/in relation to the
>>>> Renaissance, what currents of change might run through them both and
>>>> into—eventually—modernism, etc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is there something kind of populist about this? At least populist
>>>> relative to whoever was allowed to own land… Or if not populist then does
>>>> it indicate broader humanistic trends? Or is it strictly a legalistic
>>>> framework for solving obvious neighbor disputes?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bonus points if anyone has anything particularly interesting or salient
>>>> to do with the mile high club, or aviatory sex in general.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks and lots of love.
>>>>
>>>>
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