Comment on Carpenter and Ross (2009) : Eminent Domain and Equity

This article examines recent plans for US municipalities to use the state legal power of eminent domain to forcibly acquire ''underwater'' mortgages (i.e. those with negative equity), and to refinance them on terms more favorable to the homeowners in question, as a way of addressing in a socially progressive way the nation's ongoing foreclosure crisis. The article makes three main arguments. The first is that insofar as the plan threatens to disrupt prevailing norms of value distribution and risk bearing, it represents a fundamental challenge to the existing political economy of urban financial capitalism in the US and the law's mediation thereof. The second is that value, risk, and their mediation through law must be understood in the context of geographical unevenness and shifting scales of legal governance. The third is that the geographical political economy associated with the eminent domain plan is about discourses—of risk, of markets, and indeed of law per se—no less than materialities; and that the two are indelibly linked, with discourses having material effects when, through law, they structure value and risk for the manifold actors who operate within the sphere of housing finance.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2019

Mots-clés : working-class neighborhood | working classes | urban renewal | urban policy | capitalism | neoliberalism | demolition | Department of Housing and Urban Development | HOPE VI program By allowing demolitions and evictions in well-located working-class neighborhoods, urban renewal is sometimes described as a neoliberal policy, favorable to land and property investors. But this interpretation, founded on the trauma of postwar urban policies, only tells part of the story when it comes to understanding contemporary urban renewal in the United States. The policy of urban renewal implemented in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s came to symbolize the collusion of local urban and economic elites within "growth coalitions" formed to control urban space and maximize its profitability (Logan and Molotch 1987). Municipalities had made excessive use of their eminent domain powers, leading to the expulsion of a million people-mostly African Americans-who were often relocated in public housing projects confined to the most segregated areas of cities. The land "released" by these operations was sold off to private investors or public institutions (universities, hospitals, etc.) in search of available land in or near business districts. With the launch of the federal HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) program, a new cycle of urban renewal began in the early 1990s and ended in the late 2000s. The aim was no longer to eliminate urban blight, defined extensively in urban-renewal policy, but rather to initiate a fundamental transformation of public housing, one of the assisted housing programs under the responsibility of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and managed locally by public housing authorities. By an ironic twist of history, HOPE VI has sought to erase the most visible signs of modernist architecture-the towers and slab blocks-built to relocate the victims of the first urban renovation, [1] by replacing them with single-family houses designed to recreate the atmosphere of urban villages [2] that previous urban-renewal operations had precisely destroyed a few decades earlier. But while postwar urban renewal aimed to stem the economic decline of urban centers and the flight of the white middle classes to the residential suburbs, HOPE VI has taken place in a context of economic and demographic growth that has benefited central cities. Critical urban sociology saw this program as a tool to support the gentrification dynamics that began in the 1970s in certain urban centers (see, for example: Wyly and Hammel 1999; Newman and Ashton 2004; Hackworth 2007). HOPE VI was viewed as a key element in the attractiveness strategies of "entrepreneurial cities," facilitating the development of a real-estate offer dedicated to the middle and upper social categories, which, in the ongoing fight to control space, would force poor minorities to increasingly exile themselves to the urban periphery. By actively promoting local public-private partnerships, the federal government was supposed to trigger a dynamic of investment in social-housing neighborhoods that had hitherto been neglected by the commercial sector, despite their central locations, as the initial public-sector investment would be more than matched by private capital ready to be used as a result of the globalization of financial markets. [3] Such an interpretation has been strongly relativized in the context of European and French cities. Contemporary urban policies inherit the specificity of national contexts, as well as the histories, social relations and modes of regulation specific to each city, resulting in contrasting translations of the entrepreneurial city model. Thus, urban housing strategies are not only oriented towards an objective of residential attractiveness encouraging the gentrification of popular spaces, but also aim to maintain the original inhabitants or create the conditions for a social mix (Le Galès 2003; Morel Journel and Sala Pala 2011). This relativization also applies, albeit to a lesser extent, to the United States, which is often presented as the Trojan horse of a neoliberalization of urban policies. [4] The analysis of contemporary urban renewal must also Urban Renewal in the USA: A Neoliberal Policy?-Metropolitics https://www.metropolitiques.eu/spip.php?page=print&id_article...

2002

One of a city's greatest assets is its available land for development. Unfortunately, many cities have land and properties that are vacant, abandoned, or under-used, with few policies and regulations in place to convert them into revenue-generating, valuable sites. This brief outlines the ten recommended action steps that state and local governments might follow to facilitate the development of urban land and buildings. Compiling an inventory of vacant parcels, planning for the assembly and reuse of land, and working to eliminate the many legal and administrative barriers to acquisition and development are just some of the actions the authors contend should be undertaken in order to create a more transparent, efficient, and effective system for private market land development. The brief will discuss these and other proposed steps, and will highlight examples of successful practices implemented in states and localities throughout the U.S. resurgence of development for commercial, entertainment and residential uses. To capture and build upon this momentum, however, cities and older suburbs need to overcome a number of competitive disadvantages-poorly performing schools, aging infrastructure-while capitalizing upon their unique assets. This paper focuses on one of those assets-vacant and underutilized land and buildings-and provides an action agenda for urban leaders that can improve their capacity to market land, encourage development, and make the city a choice location for residents and businesses. Opportunities and Challenges V acant and abandoned urban properties are often viewed only as liabilities, and have seldom been counted among a city's assets. In fact, even efforts to quantify the extent of vacant land in cities have been few and far between. 5 The most recent, comprehensive attempt to understand how cities inventory and track these sites was a 1999 survey completed by Michael Pagano and Ann O'M. Bowman. Eighty-three cities with populations over 100,000 provided estimates of the number of abandoned structures and/or acres of "usable vacant land" within their boundaries. Survey results revealed that several cities, particularly Baltimore and Philadelphia, have large numbers of abandoned structures. In addition, the survey indicated that the average city possesses over 12,000 acres (or 15 percent of its area) of usable vacant land. 6 To put this amount of land in perspective, this average of 15 percent means that the 100 largest cities in the nation have the equivalent of the total combined land area of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Diego sitting idle. Not only do these vacant properties provide an opportunity for urban revitalization, but they offer an alternative source of developable land to green space at the edges of our metropolitan areas. The amount of usable vacant land varies widely among cities depending upon the nature and intensity of market forces working at many levels-from the conditions in the region, down to individual city blocks. San Francisco and Seattle, for example, are 'hot-market' cities located in very strong-market regions. They have far fewer vacant and abandoned properties than a city like Buffalo, located in an area of New York State that is suffering from a long-term economic readjustment and a loss of business and population. In virtually all cities, market conditions can vary substantially across neighborhoods. Historic circumstances, housing values, racial patterns, school quality, crime rates, and other variables account for these differences. Absent a robust real estate market, redeveloping vacant properties becomes a significant challenge for urban governments. Moreover, the overall neighborhood conditions resulting from decline-high crime, poor schools, lack of amenities-can cause further abandonment. In many cities and older suburbs, the scattered nature of land availability, the cost of assembly, and the public actions sometimes needed to assemble parcels make it virtually impossible for the private real estate sector to carryout larger-scale development. These impediments frequently frustrate market forces and divert development to where it is easier-on vacant undeveloped land, often located at the suburban fringe. The ability of cities to effectively carry out this often complex municipal function-vacant land redevelopment-varies widely from city to city, and can change within a city based on the internal capabilities of the local government. Part of the challenge for local governments is to overcome the many legal and administrative barriers to the reuse of urban land. Often, tracts of land in cities are not readily available-they are owned by numerous parties, entangled in cumbersome property tax foreclosure laws, improperly zoned for reuse, require infrastructure to be removed or modernized, or require environmental remediation. Real estate developers often complain of a lack of planning and coordination between government departments and developers, inconsistent and slow permitting and inspection processes, and delays by local governments on subsidy commitments-all factors that discourage private development. In order for local leaders to respond to market demands, and catalyze neighborhood revitalization, they must implement an effective process for reclaiming urban properties.

2016

Ultimately, Somin’s single-minded dedication to a federal constitutional ban on economic development taking prevents the book from offering a full and fair consideration of alternative responses to eminent domain abuse. His survey of the various state legislative reforms enacted as a result of homeowner backlash to Kelo quite rightly points out the shortcomings of populist challenges to sophisticated vested interests. But his blatant aversion to engage with the substantial problems that public purpose land assembly faces without resort to eminent domain closes off any fair comparison of proposals that rival his own, particularly the position of fellow libertarian and ardent Kelo critic, Richard Epstein. Even so, the failure of Somin’s ambitious argument does not prevent the book from being an informative, engaging, and timely contribution to this fascinating and chronically misunderstood subject

Venezuela, among other countries, they are being used as instruments for the expansion of rights to the city and the construction of the just city.