Mainland "town planning" zones

I would like to suggest that some regions are created on the mainland that are set aside for a certain amount of realism as well as aesthetic appeal. On these zones, people may not create skyboxes, or buildings over say 50m, and if there is a water front, the actual beach and sea may not be owned at all. Or maybe just one parcel right on the sea front will be for sale, and the covenant on that would require it to be developed as a public amenity such as a pier. Inland areas should have public roads so residents can get about without flying into banlines, and there should also be public (non-owned) open spaces to use as parks and meeting places.

I already pay for a premium account, why should I have to also pay an external company just to be able to enjoy something that looks like a second *life* instead of the props room of a science fiction B-movie?

One of the big attractions about buying land on the mainland is that it does NOT suffer from covenants or rules about what you can build on your own land.

Some people like to like in a well regulated community and the private islands address this quite well, with various rules about how high your house is, how far it is from your land boundary, and what purposes you can use your land for. The owners of the private islands can decide what rules that want to have and can dedicate the appropriate amount of time and resources to enforce these.

I for one would not wish to see convenants being introduced on the mainland. It was a great relief when the land search tool gained an option to allow us to search for either mainland or private island land - as i didn't then need to plough through all the ads to filter out all the land with covenants.

The older sims had quite a lot of roads and even railway tracks (as protected land) - but I guess this was a lot of work for the Lindens to implement and also cut down the amount of land they could sell (often leaving some oddly shaped pieces of land on the road edges). Given the amount of nonsense that many of us have to put up with in RL with regard to planning trivia, I guess that a lot of people are glad that we don't have to deal with all of this in SL.

Allex

I wasn't for a moment suggesting that planning regulations be introduced all over the mainland, or even on most of it! Believe me I do appreciate that lots of us just want to create in freedom and I do not ever want to stop people doing that. I am only asking for a handful of regions out of the many to be set aside for residents who want the other type of experience, the more realistic perhaps. I don't think you should tell me I need to pay a private company on top of my normal account to get what I want, any more than you would like me to tell you that *you* should move to a private estate to be able to build in the sky. There is room for all of us, with our differing tastes, on the huge SL grid.

Think of it this way. A real life street has quiet elderly people living in it, as well as young people who would like to have loud all-night parties. The way this is usually resolved is by a compromise - the old people have to listen to music a little louder and later than they would really like, while the young people have to have their music a little quieter and turned off a little earlier than they would really like. Can't you see it would be more fun if all the noisy people could move into one road, and the quiet people move into a different one? In real life that's not possible for many reasons, but it's perfectly possible in SL!

Actually the only rule I would love implemented is that LL make it so you can't divide your parcel below 512m because I'm getting sick and tired of a sim filing up fast with 16m plots with banner ads and for sale signs that are stacked up to 200m. It's a plague and it will not go away.

E

There were some mainland planed sims.

I saw one where all the streets ended in the land auction

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I tried to build a linden road in a sim and I could not even get LL to say they would accept the land if I gave it to them.

I'm sorry Zephyrin - I didn't mean to imply that you shouldn't be *allowed* to own mainland land parcels with covenants. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be Linden run estate that is nicely layed out with roads and waterfronts etc and protected by land covenants. I just wonder whether they (the Lindens) would want to take on the work of building such land and enforcing the covenants. As in RL, covenants are only any use if someone (with the right to do so) is willing to enforce them. Would Linden Labs be able to deal with all of the abuse reports relating to buildings that were slightly too high or too close to the parcel boundary? From reports in the forums, I have the impression that trying to get rid of your neighbor's prims that overlap your land already takes a certain amount of persistance.

Allex