This book explores the legitimacy of government involvement in private economic actions by presenting a study of property takings. It explores which properties Philadelphia pursued for private redevelopment and how stakeholders decided that government actions were either a use or abuse of power. A quantitative overview of citywide practice combines originally collected data on eminent domain with City of Philadelphia and US Census data on properties and neighborhoods, showing that eminent domain has been largely uncontroversial though fairly common (approximately 7,000 properties and 400 devel ... More

This book explores the legitimacy of government involvement in private economic actions by presenting a study of property takings. It explores which properties Philadelphia pursued for private redevelopment and how stakeholders decided that government actions were either a use or abuse of power. A quantitative overview of citywide practice combines originally collected data on eminent domain with City of Philadelphia and US Census data on properties and neighborhoods, showing that eminent domain has been largely uncontroversial though fairly common (approximately 7,000 properties and 400 development projects pursued from 1992 to 2007). Case studies of two controversial development projects probe more deeply into the porous and shifting boundary between desirable and undesirable government action. Readers follow these projects through planning and implementation, with evidence from public records, documents on file in offices of the Mayor and the Redevelopment Authority, and interviews with residents, business owners, community leaders, government representatives, attorneys, and appraisers. This study of eminent domain exposes a social meaning of private property—as investment—that American citizens often deploy but that has yet to be described in sociological, legal, political, or economic scholarship. The conception of property as investment implies that government ought to protect property as value committed over time—whether that value is financial, emotional, labor, or cognitive—and thus contrasts commonly accepted notions of property advanced by libertarian and left-leaning activists and academics.