Signs of Progress
Blocking up the scenery, breaking my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign
When we first started taking these trips to the beach, there was a paucity of development around here that is kind of surprising in retrospect. What used to be our condo and a condo a couple miles in each direction has since become wall-to-wall condos. Hurricanes knock them down, developers put them back up two-fold.
This is not entirely inconvenient. For instance, we have a side balcony that the neighboring complex wonderfully blocks the sun for. The sun has more buildings to hide behind in the early evening, and so I get more shade-time. But mostly, it was better for us before all of this. We could walk miles in each direction in near-complete peace. Mom could watch the sunset.
What’s happened since, though, is what happens with more people and density: Rules.
The latest addition is that of the property line. Each development, more or less, has put up signs on their beach making it be known that so-and-so area of beach is for guests of Such & Such Condo Development.
So I jumped the fence and I yelled at the house
Hey, what gives you the right?
To put up a fence and keep me out or to keep mother nature in
If God was here He’d tell it to your face, man you’re some kind of sinner
I’m in solidly red country. I’m from solidly red country, though a different state. The beaches back home are protected, to some extent, by Open Beaches law. Not perfectly protected, as there is a constant stream of conflict between land owners and beach goers. But the position on the field of the debate seems to be far more generous to the latter group than here.
Which, perhaps growing up where I did, strikes me as it should be. Beaches should be open! Communism uber alles!
More seriously, we’re talking about a pretty limited resource and a place where wealth is. Public access to these things justifiable to me. Because of the reasons I can put forth? Or because it’s a communism that I am used to? (I am aware that I am using the c-term with ridiculous breadth, but I do so anyway because I enjoy the irony.
Looking up state law here, apparently “public beach” is only really defined as the wet part of the beach, with a theoretical (but apparently ignored, according to the paper I read on it) nod towards an easement.
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s the case that the resorts here are going to call the police on anyone who crosses the property line. It certainly doesn’t seem to be enforced like the condo pools are enforced (and even that doesn’t require a key or anything, just a guy who keeps an eye on things) Thinking it through, I suspect it’s mostly about two or three things.
First, having the latitude to kick out people who are causing a ruckus. It’s hard to have rules like “no boom boxes” without the ability to enforce the rules, and it’s hard to have the ability to enforce the rules if you have to open the beach up to the public.
Second, monetizing! Our current resort has taken to lining up some pretty nice recliners and tents for a nice little fee. Having more control over “their” beach allows them to prevent people from setting up anything blocking the view from these nice recliners. To be fair to the condo, they actually seem to be pretty reasonable on their expectations. I’d put up a much bigger fuss if they were trying to keep all non-payers off the beach (though that might cost them condo business?), instead simply saying that your tents and towels must be behind the recliner/tents and can’t be above the not-entirely-unreasonable size of ten square feet.
The possible third is liability concern.
So with all of this, I suppose the system works, more or less. They haven’t cut off public access to the beach area, even if your ability to go left and right is hindered once you’re there. The signs are up, but security isn’t bird-dogging it.
There are also, of course, arguments in favor of private ownership and control of beaches, along the lines of how private ownership of forests is good for forests.
Even so, I find the proliferation of signs to be something of a bummer, and I hope that it doesn’t ultimately go further than it already has.
I can’t get used to the idea in Illinois that Lake Michigan beaches are not open to the public. A common practice is for cities or communities to make them only available to residents, and to prohibit or charge ($10 or $20 per person) for access to the undesirables from outside the Gold Coast community.
I guess I am a socialist too.Report
I always liked Oregon’s approach – the coast line is one giant state park.Report
Can you camp there?Report
No-signs worked great when everyone just assumed that there was a certain standard of behavior people should meet in public. Once people decided that the proper response to “hey don’t do that” was “show me the law that says I can’t”, no-signs stopped working quite so well.
And, y’know, some of the things you weren’t supposed to do were “being black” or “being poor” or “being homosexual”, so maybe it’s not entirely a bad thing that the unspoken rules were replaced by spoken ones.Report
Why isn’t this post titled “Get off My Condo Lawn”?Report
Oy. Private Property Rights, meaning land, is a fraught topic.
Personally, I don’t think it typically embraces ethics of stewardship enough, though self-interest does buttress better stewardship.
I live in Maine, where there is a unique-to-the-nation concept of private property; unless it’s posted, you are free to go on private property that’s not developed, but you are responsible for any damage you do and assume all liability for any harm you suffer, within limited bounds. So if you slip on a rock wall people regularly climb, for instance, you cannot sue the landowner just because the landowner hasn’t posted the wall saying ‘no climbing.’ You do it at your own risk. This has been essential to the Maine economy; it allows both private wealth to develop from land and public use, the backbone of our tourist economy. It’s a wonderful thing. Right up to the 3,000 miles of Maine coast, and it all goes hay wire, because the coast is mostly posted no-trespassing, all but about 60 or so miles of public coast line, and that posting extends down to the high-water line.
Even here, where there is so little ocean-frontage available for public access, there’s something worthwhile; if the considerations expand beyond the best benefit of humans and encompasses the best benefit overall; humans are hard on land; the more concentrated they are on the land, the more the abuse it. So the rich landowners, in protecting their coastal views and private beaches, also protect the coast line from the degradations of human encroachment.
What I see here is that the best results come from comprehensive corridors and trail systems that are maintained and published. Snowmobile trails, hiking trails, biking trails, canoe and kayak trails here all cross private land, are maintained and mapped, and result in a gain for everyone involved. I wish the concept would expand to include bio-diversity corridors, but that’s a very complex set of problems that would result in what people perceive as a huge impingement on their private property rights, rules to not eliminate the milkweed from their lawns, for instance, so the monarchs can migrate with ample food supply.
For those condo beaches, right now, there’s no pressing need to jack up enforcement. I can imagine many scenarios where such a need would, in the eyes of the condo owners, arise and start something of a beach war; these things are quite common here in Maine where the public access is so limited. Recently, a path used to the beach by a neighborhood just off the water for decades was closed by a new owner. The neighborhood, in the end, lost access, and the community suffered greatly. Less than a half-mile away, is a public beach where dog owners were doing their damage with dog poo. An effort to ban dogs resulted in organizing the dog owners into stewards, maintaining the beach so that they could maintain it as a place to take their dogs to run and play; and there’s a real sense of growing community as a result.
I am not comfortable with the notion that community and communism are the same thing, either. It’s a subconscious suggestion that there’s something wrong with working together, the poison in the well of any and all government.Report