Opinion of the Court
The owner of a department store located in the area challenged the condemnation, pointing out that his store was not itself blighted and arguing that the creation of a “better balanced, more attractive community” was not a valid public use. Id., at 31. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Douglas refused to evaluate this claim in isolation, deferring instead to the legislative and agency judgment that the area “must be planned as a whole” for the plan to be successful. Id., at 34. The Court explained that “community redevelopment programs need not, by force of the Constitution, be on a piecemeal basis—lot by lot, building by building.” Id., at 35. The public use underlying the taking was unequivocally affirmed:
- “We do not sit to determine whether a particular housing project is or is not desirable. The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive. . . . The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patrolled. In the present case, the Congress and its authorized agencies have made determinations that take into account a wide variety of values. It is not for us to reappraise them. If those who govern the District of Columbia decide that the Nation’s Capital should be beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing in the Fifth Amendment that stands in the way.” Id., at 33.
In Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U. S. 229 (1984), the Court considered a Hawaii statute whereby fee title was taken from lessors and transferred to lessees (for just compensation) in order to reduce the concentration of land ownership. We unanimously upheld the statute and rejected the Ninth Circuit’s view that it was “a naked attempt on the part of the state of Hawaii to take the property of A
