I've just been rereading the covenants, which regulate what one may build and what one may not build and it strikes me that we may have to take a decision in the near future if we want to update them and perhaps make them less restrictive in some areas - or alternatively, it would be necessary to enforce the current covenants a bit more rigourously in order to maintain the overall theme as originally intended.
I am thinking in particular of the area outside the city walls south of the bridge i.e. in the valley proper.
As you may know the covenant texts can be found [url=http://www.neualtenburg.info/id26.html:15zkht3h]here[/url:15zkht3h].
One thing I feel should be replaced is the recurring reference to "Medieval Bavarian". In light of decisions at the Town Hall meeting this could favourably be changed to "Medieval Germanic" everywhere I find.
Some other provisions that we will need to review and choose to either enforce or reform are as follows:
"- Structures must be built on solid foundations of brick or stone.
- Buildings must have tiled roofs with a 60-deg or greater pitch.
- Windows should be no larger than 1 m wide and 2 m tall on the outside.
- The maximum height for all structures and objects on land is 16 m.
- Structures must be physically plausible (no floating structures).
- Structures on stilts are not permitted.
- No default wood-textured prims created during construction are allowed to be left in the city for more than a day.
- Structures must interface with the street by either facing it or connecting to it with a path.
- A stand off of 8 m from the edge of a lot is required for all objects (except for trees) greater than 2 m tall (exceptions exist for neighbor-neighbor collaboration), if possible."
Please note that there are more provisions in the covenants themselves. The above are those, which I feel need to be discussed since they seem to clash with the direction which current buildings in the valley are taking. For example, my own residence in the SW corner does not even live up to the requirement that windows should be no larger than 1m wide (in my defense, the offending panorama windows are facing southwest directly against the void so are unlikely to annoy anyone)
Another absurdity is the following provision, which applies only to structures within the city walls:
"Structures are owned and placed by the city to give the center a dense Medieval Bavarian feel. Structures may not be replaced or moved regardless of ownership without prior consent."
Yet another thing we might want to address is the definition of "residential only". It seems to me the authors of the original document could only conceive of a distinction between residential and retail but what about the possibility for builders to have their own workshop? That's not strictly residential in my view and I think we should address that by possibly creating a zone where builders are allowed to have skyboxes at 5oo metres for their workshops.
I'd like all citizens to chime in with input on these covenant provisions so we can reach a solution that is going to last us a long time.
