Developing in fairyland
In the continuing saga of developer against conservationist, from that ‘other’ Times across the pond …
Holmes and the Times’ agony column
… comes a tale worthy of J. R. R. Tolkien … or perhaps H. P. Lovecraft:
Fairies stop developers’ bulldozers in their tracks
By Will Pavia and Chris Windle
VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.
Is Hobbiton ADA-compliant?
[For] Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, his first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village [of St. Fillans, Perthshire], which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn.
If a body meets a fairy, bulldozing the rye …
He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of
“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.
In fact, even as his firm attempted to work around the rock, they received complaints that the fairies would be “upset”. Mr Salter still believed he was dealing with a vocal minority, but the gears of Perthshire’s planning process were about to be clogged by something that looked suspiciously like fairy dust.
Goodness knows what Cthulhu would do if his lair were disturbed ….
Although the fairies themselves had no representation, they were beneficiaries of a neighborhood watch group that was vocal on their behalf:
“I went to a meeting of the community council and the concerns cropped up there,” he said. The council was considering lodging a complaint with the planning authority, likely to be the kiss of death for a housing development in a national park. Jeannie Fox, council chairman, said: “I do believe in fairies but I can’t be sure that they live under that rock.“
It’s hard to convey my delight in that disclosure: Ms. Fox wants everyone to understand that though she is multi-culturally tolerant, she does have a standard to uphold — but to where might one turn for an Elvish Impact Statement?
“I had been told that the rock had historic importance, that kings were crowned upon it.”
No fairies here
Oral history being so readily embroidered, it takes only about a generation and a half for any curious object to be invested with putative historical significance. Every couple of years or so, the Boston Globe will run a story about some large misshapen rock that ‘local tradition’ has imbued with native American totemic significance — only to be rebutted by a search of contemporary newspaper records revealing that the rock had been unceremoniously hauled out of a previous landfill.
Her main objection to moving the rock was based on the fact that it had stood on the hillside for so long: a sort of MacFeng Shui that many in the village subscribe to.
Observe too how the mere assertion is sufficient, at least for a political injunction. Proof is unnecessary; a citizen’s claimed belief will do.
Down the hill from my old neighborhood in Cambridge was an Empire-style mansard-roofed small house, entirely unremarkable except obviously over a hundred years old, sitting on a fairly lot large that — accident of circumstance — was zoned for much higher density. (Actually, we later learned this parcel’s zoning had been no accident, but a deliberate carveout from the single-family residential imposed on those of us up the hill.) A developer had bought the property and was planning to put about fifteen condos onto the site — a use for which he had unquestionable zoning.
A mansard house in
The neighbors, as they are wont to do, went ballistic. Neighborhood character would be ruined if this monstrous wall were built. (Only a half block east, there was a seventy-year-old six-story brick courtyard-style set of flats, but no one mentioned those.) So, lacking the direct handle, the neighbors sought first to hector the developer (he withstood it), then to write passionate letters to the Cambridge Chronicle (duly published), and then to argue that a particular tree in the front yard was not merely shady but actually historic, over a hundred years old.
Of course, with Cambridge’s Tree Project, the Zoning Board of Appeals and City Council had to study the matter. Among the witnesses from whom they heard was a Nobel prize-winner (in something else) who made an ass of himself by asserting, with the full polymath authority of his Nobel as credential, that in his opinion the tree was a rare form of maple, very old, irreplaceable.
If only it had been a bonsai …
An arborist summoned by the developer stated unequivocally that it was not.
Mr Salter did not just want to move the rock. He wanted to dig it up, cart it to the roadside and brand it with the name of his new neighbourhood.
The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.”
So it was with my local
Despite the utter collapse of their evidentiary claim, foolishly based on verifiable fact rather than fairies, the neighbors were by now so riled the City Council urged the developer into mediation. What emerged, a few weeks later, was a scaled-down condo, twelve or so units instead of sixteen, with the old house preserved and renovated and the new condos designed to be architecturally compatible with it.
Mr Salter estimates that the [adventure] has cost him £15,000.
Perhaps you think this little story entertaining, or limited to a few imaginative places like fairyland or
In place of fairies or rare maple trees, try substituting:
· Wetlands
All of them are equally effective development barriers, some in fact quite a bit more effective.
To say, as some might, “yes, but those are valid causes” is to miss the point: validity or invalidity has nothing to do with effectiveness. Nor, for that matter, does objective reality, for the belief is enough to stop the process, either temporarily or permanently.
The zoning-approval and zoning-appeals process is at heart an irreconcilable clash between two different value and decision approaches:
· Deterministic, fact-based adjudication.
· Emotional impact assessments.
Jane Austen knew these were opposites.
Before you leap to the authorially-endorsed conclusion that these reviews should be exclusively about facts, recognize that:
In politics, perception is reality.
The zoning-appeals system can thus be seen as a developmental rheostat, imposed into an otherwise swiftly flowing process for the specific purpose of allowing emotions to vent. It is a politician’s safety valve, an automatic means of enabling an elected or appointed official to discover whether a particular action has a political cost, and if so how much.
Fairy suffrage!
Like a child whose tantrum only makes him madder, until he finally cries himself out in exhaustion, there are times when opposition for a cause becomes after a time opposition for its own sake.
The new estate will now centre on a small park, in the middle of which stands a curious rock.
Work begins next month, if the fairies allow.
The fairies … or the building department.
