>Jim:
>> Collective rights represent only a _potential_ for good. Also, some
>> protection of individual rights is needed.
>
>Individual rights and private ownership of land are two different and
>largely antithetical things. Eminent domain pertains almost exclusively to
>private ownership of land - which in my book is abomination and theft since
>people do not produce land hence have no basis for claiming property rights
>over it. It is theft because it denies the use of a natural non-produced
>item to other people.
But Woj, this case was about the ability of cities to seize property for commercial development - e.g., the replacement of privately owned residential property with privately owned Wal-Marts.
>As far as urban development is concerned, the eminent domain is only
>tangentially related to it. Zoning, land use and housing is really a
>cover-up for class and race divisions. Here in Baltimore, the city was sued
>by ACLU for "warehousing" the poor in highly segregated and dismal housing
>projects - the city lost and some of the worst projects were demolished, and
>new housing (under the Hope VI project) was built in their place.
The history of most "urban renewal" in the U.S. is the clearing of working-class housing and its replacement with commercial properties, highways, and luxury housing. The prototype was the redevelopment of New Haven in the 1950s and 1960s, under the joint guidance of Sen. Prescott Bush and Yale University. It turned housing into a now-abandoned shopping mall, and put up a wretched highway called the Oak Street Connector that bisected a neighborhood. I thought this was just the sort of thing you hate.
Doug