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A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

nytimes.com

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Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#131

Post by randallsquared »

aaomidi wrote: post #113
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice it doesn't matter at all, just BLM (Bureau of Land Management) alone owns 387,500 sq mi of public land. For comparison, Scotland, is 30,090 sq mi in size . This is not counting local, state and national parks and forests. Why fix a problem that doesn't exist? Some of the largest parks are comparable in size to European countries. https://mapfight.xyz/map/yellowstone/ https://mapfight.xyz/map/death.valley/

Because just giving out land numbers is pretty useless? How much of that land is where people actually are? Most of that land you need to drive to.

If you want to be where people are, you can just be home. Isn't the point of hiking and camping being away from other people? ;)

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#132

Post by dathinab »

Scaevolus wrote: post #21

A number of European countries have "freedom to roam". It would be nice if America had an equivalent, but given how lobbying works that seems impossible at this point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

> It would be nice if America had an equivalent

A problem is that (at least some parts of) America has pretty absurd "stand your ground" laws (absurd from a EU POV).

Even in the EU countries which don't have freedom to roam laws it is most times safe and often rather inconsequential to trespass, as long as (very oversimplified) you don't climb any fences or similar and keep on the path. (I.e. you have only "accidentally" overlooked the sign pointing out it's a private path you are not allowed to take.)

Note that I strongly recommend reading/translating path signs, they might matter a lot. Similar keep on the path, not just for nature but because there might be unexpected natural and less natural dangers (like WW2 left overs, accidentally entering military training areas, flash flood risks, dangerous nature, etc.).

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#133

Post by cercatrova »

altairprime wrote: post #82
dixie_land wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then essentially it's unenforceable, so no I don't want that in the states. fair to me means "not one inch across my property line"

Incorrect. Broadly-defined laws that do not hammer out the specifics to the inch are absolutely enforceable, just not with perfect certainty ahead of time. All laws are imprecise, and judges and juries are well able to operate more flexibly than a rigid programming-style logical interpretation (IF position X WITHIN bounds Y-Z THEN arrest) would allow.

Yes. In my experience, technical people often assume that laws and judges act like programming commands, when in reality it's more like a case-by-case assessment from the point of view of a reasonable person. Judges are not stupid, they understand what "fair distance" would mean.

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#134

Post by cercatrova »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #123
tarboreus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, no. A yard is a single open space. Your backyard is the single open space behind (i.e., not in front of) your house.

In america "backyard" often refers to an area extending beyond ones own neighbourhood. It's where the acronym "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard) comes from. The OP could indeed be objecting to unknown people camping anywhere near their property, even off of it.

As an American, yes backyard can mean the general area where one stays, but in the specific comment above, I also took it to mean literally in someone's backyard.

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#135

Post by randallsquared »

behringer wrote: post #80
exit wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think "not one inch across my property line" makes sense, but there is still a problem to resolve regarding access to public land. in particular the article describes a problem with public land being inaccessible except through "corner crossing".

The solution is simple. Land owners should just be required to grant access to public land they border. If you don't like that, don't buy property that borders public land.

Virtually every property borders public land of some kind (a public road right of way, typically). It might be interesting to minimally specify what it means to allow access in a way that doesn't allow virtually any path across one's land. You can't just require allowance from any other border directly to the nearest border of public land, for this reason (could be through the owner's house or garden). One way might be to require the specification of public traversal areas as part of the title. Or 100m around the edges of every property is traversable.

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#136

Post by ilyt »

Siddarth1977 wrote: post #119
mediascreen wrote: post #16

As someone who has grown up with "Freedom to roam"[0] laws, it seems so weird that you would need to keep track of who owns the land where you are hiking. (To be fair you can't just hunt wherever you want in Sweden either.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Sweden

"Freedom to roam" laws are an archaic notion that only sort of work in very specific locations like the Nordic countries. Even with a large staff of park rangers and a budget for trail maintenance, trash bins, toilet facilities and informational signs about "leave no trace" ethics, it's still hard to minimize the damage tourists do in parks. And even within parks, we don't let people freely roam, we ask them to stay…

Well, if your average tourist does that yeah

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#137

Post by yamtaddle »

phpisthebest wrote: post #89
Scaevolus wrote: post #21

A number of European countries have "freedom to roam". It would be nice if America had an equivalent, but given how lobbying works that seems impossible at this point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

As a general rule I dislike the form of government that is European, and prefer the American Individualist system, so I dont think it would be nice if America adopts more European laws, we have adopted too many of them already IMO. We revolted for a reason, many Americans seem to have forgotten those reasons in the centuries since, Europe has always been more authoritarian than the US, and they largely replaced monar…

> We revolted for a reason, many Americans seem to have forgotten those reasons in the centuries since

Aristocrats couldn't accept admitting representatives elected by the merely rich, rather than only aristocrats, since that would obviously be a large step toward the end of aristocratic political privilege, while most British citizens in positions of political power in the colonies were rich but were not aristocrats, so wouldn't accept representation that curtailed the franchise and/or restricted office to aristocrats, as it was in Britain (American revolutionary leaders wanted a slightly larger franchise, as was the custom in the colonies, and without which they would suffer a great loss of power and probably wealth, since office is a great way to get richer, maybe even more-so then than now) and these positions were irreconcilable for reasons of individual interest on both sides?

[EDIT] I mean there were also propaganda reasons but if that hadn't been a factor the war very likely wouldn't have happened until/unless Britain tried to end slavery.

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#138

Post by Kamq »

9dev wrote: post #101
phpisthebest wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The "right to roam" is a collective right granting the public a "right" over that of the individual property owners right to control access and use to their property. To conflate the "right to roam" as a "individual right" completely miss understands what an individual right is

This is possibly the core difference between the US and Europe for me; American individualism isn’t about individuals, but property, and it always has been. By granting someone a degree of land ownership so extreme they can inhibit other people from experiencing nature across it, you’re merely fetishising property, and doing every single individual a net disservice in the process.

> This is possibly the core difference between the US and Europe for me; American individualism isn’t about individuals, but property, and it always has been.

That doesn't jive with my experience on the subject. The core of American individualism has always been the traditional first amendment rights. The idea that you can live your life your way requires property rights, sure, but they're ancillary to the ultimate goal of freedom.

Now, if you don't agree with the first amendment, it may look very different. And I could understand why someone would disagree with it. Not everyone wants to have to tolerate, say, nazi rallies being held out in the open. But to reduce it all to property is missing the forest for the trees.

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#139

Post by dkokelley »

exabrial wrote: post #125

Really shortsided position by the land owner, and I have no doubt he’ll end up with far less rights than he started by raking people over the coals. Pulling straight from Franklin Covey’s seven habits: think win-win. Simply allowing people to cross at the corner and encouraging them to do so by building a path works keeps them off his land and in public areas. Hell even charge them a reasonable fee for the crossing t…

Agreed that squeezing too hard will probably backfire. I don’t agree that encouraging or facilitating the crossing is a win-win.

It’s likely that the landowners bought the plots strategically to get de facto “ownership” of the public land. Why buy all of the land when you can buy the moat around it?

Re: A navigation app that illuminates public land within privately held property

#140

Post by chrismeller »

saagarjha wrote: post #107
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice it doesn't matter at all, just BLM (Bureau of Land Management) alone owns 387,500 sq mi of public land. For comparison, Scotland, is 30,090 sq mi in size . This is not counting local, state and national parks and forests. Why fix a problem that doesn't exist? Some of the largest parks are comparable in size to European countries. https://mapfight.xyz/map/yellowstone/ https://mapfight.xyz/map/death.valley/

Having to drive to a place to hike rather than just being able to go across the areas around you is annoying.

It’s the US, you’re going to have to drive to it anyway because it’s 500 miles away.
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