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

[Mark Kohut]

Since everything connects in Pynchon, who contains everything (and in
varying sizes, like nested infinities),
there is this re air law:

The earliest legislation in air law was a 1784 decree of the Paris police
<https://www.britannica.com/topic/police>forbidding balloon flights without
a special permit.

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 8:52 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> In international law, which I have been studying this semester, property
> ownership "upward" is not infinite.
>
> Does not include outer space, which is defined in differing, sometimes
> contentious, sometimes adjudicated ways internationally.
>
> Where the earth atmosphere ends is one major consensus by many countries.
> There is a line called, I believe, a Karman line--I could always look it
> up--creeping toward standardization. Lowest spot where satellites can
> orbit, is another.
>
> The great chain of cosmic ownership is another casualty of modernity, so
> to speak. Second thing we do is bring in the lawyers.
>
> as above, not below.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Apr 14, 2017, at 6:40 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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