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Abstract
Large-scale urban redevelopment projects catalyze moments of peril and opportunity. In the wake of the United States Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision affirming economic development as a public use under the takings clause of the Constitution, these perils and opportunities have again become a site of major contestation. An unusual alliance of libertarian property-rights ideologues and civil-rights organizations has joined forces to challenge the use of eminent domain in urban economic development. In this article, I analyze the history of these alliances and their implicit reinforcement of deeply reactionary constructions of property. I conclude with an evaluation of two emergent models—community benefit agreements and community equity shares—that provide promising community tools for alternatives to homeowner rule and neoliberal urban renewal.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Debbie Becher, Carrie Alexandrowicz, Rachel Brahinsky, Lyndi Hewitt, Tad Krauze, Bob Lake, Don Mitchell, Marc Silver, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and feedback on various drafts of this piece. Any mistakes or misrepresentations probably reflect my foolhardy disregard of their wise counsel.
Notes
1 Michigan reversed Poletown, shortly before the Supreme Court heard arguments in Kelo.
2 Anti-Kelo ballot initiatives in Arizona (passed) and California (failed) pursued a more expansive libertarian agenda, requiring states to compensate owners for regulatory takings as well (Niedt and Weir, Citation2010).
3 This list could be extended to include, for example, the defense of territory and the biopolitical control of bodies and households.
4 As with so many debates related to the power of capitalism versus class struggle, the abstract question of strategic versus structural selectivity may have the greatest practical value as a check on undue privileging of structure or agency at the moment of concrete analysis.
5 See also Bob Jessop's summary of Burkhard Tuschling's approach to this question. In the United States, this parallels a series of challenges to the supposed neutrality of legal formalism that have run from Progressive-era Legal Realism's critique of property rights to Critical Race Studies’ attack on color-blindness (Bell, Citation1992).
6 This is not to suggest that urban renewal and the use of eminent domain was not, in some cases, actively supported by some members of affected communities (Connolly, Citation2008; Highsmith, Citation2009).
7 These positions are reflected in the mission and publications of the Institute for Justice's Castle Coalition (castlecoalition.org; Berliner, 2003), as well as in the writings of some legal scholars (see, e.g., contributions to Merriam and Ross, Citation2006 by James W. Ely, Jr., Steven Eagle, and others).
8 It should be noted, however, that most of the relevant research focuses on national rather than local government. A recent National Center for Suburban Studies poll revealed higher degrees of confidence in local government than in federal government.
9 Often disinvestment has been closely related to the process of urban renewal and redevelopment (see Fullilove, Citation2004, among others).
10 See the CATO Institute's Mark Calabria on FOX News’ Willis Report, available at www.cato.org. The plan has also been critiqued, from the left, for its reliance upon private venture capital in the property selection and refinancing process (Kuttner, 2012).
11 Certain procedural restrictions advanced by property rights advocates may prove useful in providing a degree of participation.