Pittsburgh recently planned to tear down blocks of eclectic downtown stores and businesses to create a modern shopping district. The plan has since fallen through, primarily because Nordstrom, the key anchor to the project, decided not to commit. This was despite a $28 million gift from the city just to show up. (7)
             Further example of this frightening trend can be found in the community of Chester, outside of Austin [not to pick on Texas or anything]. It is an older suburb with twenty-three small businesses and roughly two hundred households. The neighbors know each other here. County officials want to tear the community down and build an Ikea. "We're just like family here on the street. It feels to me, if we weren't poor people, they wouldn't come here," says resident Ruth McGruder. (1)
             City planners do understand that Chester does not want to be torn down, but they say that progress requires it. Mr. Waugh, the county mayor, explained: "In Chester you have bus depots right next to houses, the roads are too narrow and there is not adequate parking. The people do not have access to good shopping. You would never build a place like that today. We can do better."(1)
             Apparently doing better entails booting families out of their homes and paving the way for an Ikea that will provide greater tax revenue than the present residents. This method of community planning has been catching on at all levels of American government. The number of lawsuits challenging government eminent domain plans has doubled over the last sixty years. By some estimates, the use of eminent domain is now increasing five percent annually. The real growth of this practice is even greater when you consider that in the past, most seizures were for the purpose of constructing military facilities while we were fighting WWII, and later the Cold War. Such explanations are now rare and motivations are more likely to be tax revenue driven. (2)
             It is eas...