By Steven Malanga

June 25, 2008

In her two great works--The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities-Jane Jacobs explained that effective economic development and urban renewal arise from the bottom up as the product of thousands of enterprises and people working on their own without a master plan, rather than from the top down, as planned by politicians or bureaucrats. The vibrancy and diversity of city markets and neighborhoods lie in "the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework of public action," she observed.

This week, it is exactly three years since the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision, which endorsed a very different view of how local economic progress occurs. In that decision, the court said that it was okay for government to condemn and take private property and use it for new economic development if officials believed that the seizures would "provide appreciable benefits to the community, including..new jobs and increased tax revenue." The court's decision expanded the so-called "takings" clause of the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which previously had been interpreted to mean that government could only take private property to create a public "good," such as construction of a needed new highway or water pipeline.

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Posted by dcjaya at June 26, 2008 6:31 AM