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March 19, 2010
IF YOU CAN’T DEFINE IT, YOU CAN’T USE IT: PART 2, MY NEIGHBORHOOD, BLIGHT OR WRONG?
Affordable Housing Institute: US
by David A. Smith
The second in a two-part series on the spurious use of "blight" to justify eminent domain takings.
As we saw yesterday, using as our text a protracted City Journal editorial essay by Nicole Gelinas, when eminent domain is used for economic development (ED4ED) with a private developer as the implementing party, the potential for mischief is simply enormous – because the law of economic gravity creates political pressure that disenfranchises the economically disadvantaged.
...When the state tries to crowbar a small property holder off his land, the contest is unequal, and the politically weaker are at an enormous disadvantage.
This is a civil-rights problem, both in its abstract sense and in racial or ethnic terms, because when power is unequal, it is normally the racially disadvantaged who lose, which is why Justice Thomas so articulately dissented in Kelo.
...The same power dynamics are at work in the cases being contested today, such as the billion-dollar Brooklyn struggle over Atlantic Yards.
...In the twenty-first century, things are different because of the information revolution. The combination of the Freedom Of Information Act and the internet has enabled citizen journalism, neutralizing the previous power imbalance of the media, to the point where Norman Oder, an individual with no credentials other than a burning desire to uncover the truth, can out-investigate the (conflicted) New York Times with reporting worthy of a Pulitzer.
NoLandGrab: To be fair, Oder had decades of experience as a journalist, and some coursework in the law, to go along with his doggedness.
Posted by eric at March 19, 2010 10:59 AM