Solving a hot political problem through Sim City

By Christina Eater
Collegian Staff
March 1, 2006

If you’ve ever played Sim City, you know that sometimes the only viable way to reduce crime and encourage economic growth is to click the Bulldozer over those slums and put in a stadium or a shopping district. You can’t afford to be wanton, of course, or the Sims will riot and your approval rating will plummet—not to mention the repercussions if you accidentally demolish the nuclear plant. But, handled correctly, the Bulldozer is the key to mayoral success and a thriving metropolis full of happy, productive denizens.

Eminent domain, the right of a government to appropriate private property, is fundamentally about putting the needs of a community over those of an individual. It enables governments from the national to the local level to secure property for public works projects, like interstate highways and public libraries, that benefit everyone but that few private citizens or groups would give their land over to on their own.

I realize that in practice it doesn’t always work in the interest of the people. There’s corruption, and there’s vice, and sometimes corporate interests take advantage of the system to screw the little guy out of his little, middle-class home. But isn’t that true of anything? Universities sometimes educate terrible people, who pervert what they’ve learned so as to do terrible things, but that doesn’t mean we should abolish higher education. This analogy demonstrates the importance of taking reasonable precautions with the use of eminent domain.

In the United States, private ownership of property is protected by the Fifth Amendment, which states that no one may “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” This constraint is essential to maintaining citizens’ rights to security, but by itself, it’s clearly not enough. That much was made clear recently in Kelo v. City of New London, when the Supreme Court allowed people’s homes to be bulldozed so that a private developer could put in condominiums.

Swift legislation is needed to specifically bar any level of government from appropriating private property for nonpublic use. In addition, I’d like to see some consideration of the interest of the people even where the appropriation would be for a public building, such as the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Few Philadelphia residents haven’t heard of the move to expand the Convention Center, or the museums, galleries and other cultural facilities that comprise its price tag. If the expansion is what Philadelphians want for their city, then perhaps the loss of these landmarks, and the character they bring to the city, is a fair exchange. But people deserve to be given that choice.

And it probably wouldn’t hurt to establish a clear and legally binding definition of “just compensation” that takes into account the market value of the property before it is condemned (the word, in this context, simply means “appropriated”). One detail many cases seem to have in common is that the price offered is significantly lower than the market value of the property. Another is the value of intangibles. To businesses, this includes things like location, licenses and proximity to customers. Homeowners possess intangibles like the relationships they’ve formed within the community and the emotional attachment they have to their homes. Both should be compensated for those losses, shouldn’t they? The process of relocating is more complicated than simply selling one piece of property and purchasing another, and the costs attached should also be included in the “compensation” provided to those forced out by eminent domain.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think eminent domain is an eminently good and useful tool. But like the Sim City Bulldozer, it needs to be handled with care.

eaterc1@lasalle.edu