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February 09, 2005
The Impossibility of Zoning (in Henrietta, NY)
Mortimer Shy’s
Address before the Town of Henrietta Zoning Board
Gentlemen. What I am about to say is something that either you are well aware of, or something you never heard of. That is, it will either shock you or amuse you, that you have known what is going on in this town for so long, being past able administrators of it, or you do not know what is going on in this town, to which I also say, Amen.
A few of you know me, as a man of modest intellectual achievements, and Msr. Lattimore and Fosquith, I thank you for the invitation to speak. For the others I know I shall appear as an upstart theorist, as what I have to say cannot be easily placed on the agenda of a group, only apparently commissioned to deal with zoning board applications. But this is the first most appropriate forum, for these revelations, and I am just looking you in the eyes, gentlemen, and discharging my own duty as a man of truth and local resident, though I must confess years ago I moved into the city of Rochester to a pleasant tree line street with sidewalks.
But the once rural town of Henrietta stands in crisis. You are on the threshold of hearing an idea which goes to the heart or our shared conceptions of the landscape, which, we all know, has seemed to have been in state of transformation. But which now, as I reveal the truth of it, stands before us for a clear decision on the future of reality itself. I said: THE FUTURE OF REALITY ITSELF, sirs.
And if you are ready, forget about your previous learning, imagine if you will yourselves as newly appointed philosophers, and feel the chill in the air . . . I am perhaps to aptly named, Mortimer Shy. Um . . .
We have all noticed, from the relative safety of our cars, how rapidly this suburban landscape has become filled up, with shopping malls and sprawing housing developments, medical facilities, sports emporiums, whatever could be brought in a flatbed truck it seems, etc, even as the original grid of roads has become impossible to navigate. We have in fact all waited for an end to rampant commercial expansion, and those of you on this Zoning Board have enacted seemingly heroic measures to stem the progress, contain the mess, balance the needs of growth and taxes and population, the whole boondagle (and that is a good word for it, gentlemen, boondagle!) of the varied needs of our expanding gluttenous society. But we haven’t really done anything but pallatiate and cater to varying factions, our small mission has seemed only to be to listen to petitions and make political decisions that would now usher in a greater good, and then again perhaps mitigate against a growing feeling that we were losing the very look and history of the town called, perhaps fatuously, Henrietta!
But we have never REALLY understood what was happening. Or maybe some of us have, and are here about to be exposed to their neighbors! For as I said at the beginning, some of you may have known for years about the miraculous nature or this geography, and special secret I am about to reveal.
Nicholas Eckhart, a recently certified Land Surveyor, claims to have proven what many people have long suspected about the terrain in the town of Henrietta. As over the years the town has experienced a seemingly geometrical discovery of more and more internal space, resulting in tenfold commerical development, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. “Or nightmares,“ reflects the gangly six foot nine land surveyor, and I quote: “It appears that the town must make a decision as to how much growth it wants; for the peculiar properties of its terrain actually allow for what looks like infinite growth.”
“The peculiar properties of its terrain!” he says, and gentlemen I shall produce Mr. Eckhart at the very next meeting of this Board. It is best now to just try to comprehend the discovery, for he did not invent this. And neither is Mortimer Shy insane, as Msr Lattimore and Mosquite are ready to attest, but I am a man of modest intellectual achievements, as I said. Who lives on a city street, yes, and walks up the pub at the corner where he may discuss his wacky thoughts, yes--but!
What Eckhart has proven, and what his friend Phillip Williams is claiming he can also demonstrate mathematically , is that the terrain up a parcel of land, an interior space, of indeterminate size, on one side of any given square, or rather quadrangle being developed. This it does, making new land available simply for the taking, at least one consecutive space of even greater size; unless of course a competing grid, from another direction, intercepts it. This means there is actually limitless space within the town of Henrietta, as long as one can discover which side of the square, or rather quadrangle, is the one yielding a new interior terrain. And if one plans carefully enough, spies which direction to build in and puts up major installations that will keeping feeding, as it will, the monstrous new reality.
Eckhard says that he had a hunch, or rather an intuition, that it would be the shortest side of any developed quadrangle shaped piece of land that wouldup a new interior land mass. That is where one would set up the surveying equipment and chart out a kind of free zone. And, alarmingly, a developer could just go ahead and build whatever they want there, since this area isn’t going to show up on any map! And he doesn't have to appear in front of any Zoning Boards, either.
But all is going to be available for shoppers, and patients coming and going from the new medical facilities that have mushroomed around here, and people can locate these regions, or remember how to follow the signs once they are inside the new geography. And it appears this kind of development has already been going on for some years; so somebody knows all about this. Eckhart and myself, possibility accompanied by John J. McCarthy, the former news reporter and helicopter pilot who has recently accomplished another alarming study of traffic flow in the Rochester region, we all are going to do some aeriel photography--but come to think of it, that might not reveal anything but the old farmhouses . . .
Naturally, other towns in the area are interested in knowing whether this same super-infinity is available within their borders. I doubt it. I think this is just Henrietta's problem, though it might be leaking into Brighton. Previous assumptions used by land surveyors, map makers, and bicycle riders, were that undeveloped land was finite, and of course eventually Henrietta would be filled up, unless parts were declared to be “space.” A now most quaint nomenclature indeed.
Posted by mortimer at February 9, 2005 07:28 PM
Comments
Mortimer
I don't think you know what you are talking about.
Ted Endrun
Posted by: Ted Endrun at February 24, 2005 03:11 AM
Mortimer
I don't think you know what you are talking about.
Ted Endrun
Posted by: Ted Endrun at February 24, 2005 03:12 AM
It should be noted that the equation used in my demonstration of the infinite nature of the Henrietta landscape relies on the assumption that the universe is expanding (Don't ask me how; it's a complicated equation!). If the universe is, in fact, not expanding but rather, contracting (the possibility that the universe stays the same size was ruled out years ago as an "absurdity" by physicists, who like things to be constantly expanding or contracting), then the Henrietta landscape may, I believe, eventually begin to SHRINK. This won't be happening any time soon, mind you--as Nick Eckhart's empirical observations clearly confirm, we have not yet come close to reaching the "present theoretical capacity" of the hidden Henrietta terrain. Still though, if this uncontrolled commercial expansion continues, and if the minority position among physicists wins out in the end, we might have the unsettling--although some might say, relieving (and even amusing)--experience of witnessing the spontaneous vanishing of, say, a Denny's restaurant, or even an entire shopping complex.
Posted by: Phillip Williams at February 24, 2005 09:07 PM
It should be noted that the equation used in my demonstration of the infinite nature of the Henrietta landscape relies on the assumption that the universe is expanding (Don't ask me how; it's a complicated equation!). If the universe is, in fact, not expanding but rather, contracting (the possibility that the universe stays the same size was ruled out years ago as an "absurdity" by physicists, who like things to be constantly expanding or contracting), then the Henrietta landscape may, I believe, eventually begin to SHRINK. This won't be happening any time soon, mind you--as Nick Eckhart's empirical observations clearly confirm, we have not yet come close to reaching the "present theoretical capacity" of the hidden Henrietta terrain. Still though, if this uncontrolled commercial expansion continues, and if the minority position among physicists wins out in the end, we might have the unsettling--although some might say, relieving (and even amusing)--experience of witnessing the spontaneous vanishing of, say, a Denny's restaurant, or even an entire shopping complex.
Posted by: Phillip Williams at February 24, 2005 09:08 PM
The semicolon can be your best friend.
I've listed a few misspelled words and typo's I noticed.
-Paragraph five.
sprawing / sprawling.
boondagle / boondoggle.
gluttenous / gluttonous.
- Paragraph seven.
commerical / commercial
In the tenth paragraph you make mention to an "Eckhard." Not the afore / aft mentioned Eckhart is this a typo or a different character?
Also in paragraph five you use the word pallatiate. I couldn't find the word in my dictionary or in any online dictionaries. However I did find one article using the word, so I'm assuming it's used correctly and that you didn't mean palliate.
Posted by: the voice of reason at April 14, 2005 05:55 AM
Dear Voice of Reason
Thank you for your kind corrections. I do not have a secretary, and frequently write by candlelight, so sometimes letters are transposed in the flickering. Rarely, though it does happen, a word is insensibly lengthened, as in the case of "palliate", lengthened to "pallatiate", as if the author was not satisfied with it as is. It is not possible for me to run to a dictionary to check on these things, for it would surely break my concentration, which is needed to develop the thesis and lecture at hand; so it is nice to know there are people like you to go around picking up my miscues and setting them . . . upright. Obviously Eckhard is Eckhart--on this point you are being only quarrelsome.
Mortimer
Posted by: Mortimer Shy at April 21, 2005 05:02 PM
