Legal geographies -: Kelo, contradiction, and capitalism

In the Susette Kelo et al. v. City of New London, Connecticut, et al. decision of 2005, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court held that the use of eminent domain by the New London Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization charged with redeveloping a depressed site in New London, Connecticut, was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which prevents the taking of private property for "public use" without just compensation. Unlike prior eminent domain decisions, the immediate beneficiaries in Kelo were private interests: the public benefit was simply the localized trickle-down effects of economic redevelopment. This short commentary argues that Kelo offers an instructive window into the contradictory geographies of property under urban neoliberalism. While neoliberal redevelopment frequently invokes and mobilizes private property, it may also dispossess owners and rework entitlements in the name of "highest and best use," as in New London. The social geographies of dispossession, however, are not equitable: smaller and otherwise marginalized interests may suffer disproportionately, despite ideological assurances to the contrary.