eminent domain for the private sector
Click the title for the post on World Changing. This article talks about the recent Supreme Court Ruling that allows non-government, private groups to aquire land through emineant domain, siting that private corporations can yield profit while creating a public service and progress. This is a strange argument, does the ends justify the means. Should we be taking away private land from private owners (mainly residential, probably lower income) to meet the demands of a growing corporation because it might yield public good? Is land seizure from the the private to private have anything to do with public?
This court ruling was mainly centered around the 5th Amendment, (nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.). I remember when I was learning about this in 7th grade. The example that was used had to do with a woman that owned a house where the city government was trying to build a hwy exit ramp near Roosevelt Field Mall, when the mail was being constructed. This woman's house ended up being smack in the middle of the exit ramp turn around and she stood her ground. It was a funny site to image. Eventually, she was told to give her house up for saftey reasons.
I see the reasoning behind giving upland for a hwy, or train, or a park system, but how does a private company produce public good by seizing someone's land/house? The only thing I can think of is cleaning up neighborhoods, but that usually yields low-income subsidized housing which would be very low profit for a set number of years. Atlanta did this during the Olympics. They cleaned an area, where it was mainly shacks and burned out neighborhoods and they put in nice, clean housing and Dorms for Georgia Tech and Georgia State, while establishing the subsidized house after the Olympics.
Atlanta is a city where neighborhoods are flipped within 40 years, sometimes as low as 10 years. It seems that the profit machines only gain from poor construction (something that doesn't last more than 10 - 15 year) and the concept of flipping (tearing down only to rebuild). There is so much construction going on, and it never stops. You rarely see areas keeping the old structures and improving on them. I remember being in Amsterdam and seeing the store fronts that were all the same from the last 50-100 years. The construction teams would restore the fronts and reconstruct the insides.
Alright, this post went in couple different directions, but don't like seeing an ever-changing cities. I like cities to have it's own feel, an established architecture that blends with the local landscape, something that personalized for the city, not the same box apartments, target, townhomes, home depot facade.
This court ruling was mainly centered around the 5th Amendment, (nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.). I remember when I was learning about this in 7th grade. The example that was used had to do with a woman that owned a house where the city government was trying to build a hwy exit ramp near Roosevelt Field Mall, when the mail was being constructed. This woman's house ended up being smack in the middle of the exit ramp turn around and she stood her ground. It was a funny site to image. Eventually, she was told to give her house up for saftey reasons.
I see the reasoning behind giving upland for a hwy, or train, or a park system, but how does a private company produce public good by seizing someone's land/house? The only thing I can think of is cleaning up neighborhoods, but that usually yields low-income subsidized housing which would be very low profit for a set number of years. Atlanta did this during the Olympics. They cleaned an area, where it was mainly shacks and burned out neighborhoods and they put in nice, clean housing and Dorms for Georgia Tech and Georgia State, while establishing the subsidized house after the Olympics.
Atlanta is a city where neighborhoods are flipped within 40 years, sometimes as low as 10 years. It seems that the profit machines only gain from poor construction (something that doesn't last more than 10 - 15 year) and the concept of flipping (tearing down only to rebuild). There is so much construction going on, and it never stops. You rarely see areas keeping the old structures and improving on them. I remember being in Amsterdam and seeing the store fronts that were all the same from the last 50-100 years. The construction teams would restore the fronts and reconstruct the insides.
Alright, this post went in couple different directions, but don't like seeing an ever-changing cities. I like cities to have it's own feel, an established architecture that blends with the local landscape, something that personalized for the city, not the same box apartments, target, townhomes, home depot facade.
i think they are overreaching just a little bit here putting this under eminent domain.. i think if you look it up it would probably come closer to straight out stealing. the supreme court justified its ruling by saying that by taking the land and allowing it to be used by corps would increase the city's revenue because the corp being there would pay more taxes than small housing. it's bullshit, but it's the govt.. nothing new!
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2:11 PM