In Your Land is My Land, John Tierney has a couple of simple questions for potential U.S. Supreme Court Justices:
"Two questions I'd like to ask candidates for Sandra Day O'Connor's job:
1. Does the Constitution forbid the government from seizing your home and giving it to someone else?
2. If you're not sure, would you be willing to tour Pittsburgh before taking this job?"
Tierney seems to be a bit clueless on the concept of original intent amd the relationship of #2 to #1, but then he's writing in the New York Times. His follow-on description of Pittsburgh's urban planners and the mess they made with "eminent domain," however, is worth reading. When dealing with dynamic human environments, there are tremendous limits on what "planning" can be expected to accomplish.
1. Does the Constitution forbid the government from seizing your home and giving it to someone else?
And I'll say it again - that question might have been asked of David Souter, if the hearings hadn't been hijacked by the worse-than-useless Senator Kennedy, and those creeps from PAW, NOW, and all the rest of the rotten alphabet soup. And it will happen again.
Mark, I think you'll be surprised at how this particular issue manages to elbow itself into the coming hearings. Kelo hit a real nerve in your country, and that's something to be both proud of and grateful for.
With that said, there's a Guest Blog coming from Tom Holsinger and Trent Telenko on the Lobbyist Money Game that has just started. It's a testament to Kelo's deep impact that I think it will manage to force itself through that craziness.
That's a good column, though I think that his characterization of "thriving small businesses downtown" is a bit of a stretch. Also, while I'm not fond of the Gateway Center architecture, AFAIK it's a commercial success and point state park is quite popular.
Also, leaving out the steel industry's decline is pretty negligent as far as analysis goes of Pgh's economic woes. Bad planning decisions in East Liberty, the North Side, and downtown were just icing on the cake
Having managed two of the largest urban reviatilzation eminent domain projects of the last decade in Boston and San Jose, I've direct experience and Tierney hits the nail on the head. I'm providing a copy to all my colleagues. Beyond the , planners and developers are the banks that won't back local, different, rehab. It's national credit tenant, new and big box. Development is driven by the money, more then the planners.