[ubernostrum]

The language you choose to use -- about "blighted" parts of a city and realizing their "full potential" -- is the language of eminent domain.

Which is curious given that you then turn around and talk about "rights of the property owner". Gentrification is largely about a wealthy group of people declaring that they will do more useful things with a neighborhood than the current residents would, so they should be allowed to move in and take over, whether through economic coercion (driving up prices and rents) or through legal coercion (having buildings condemned, properties seized to be "improved", etc.).

[SmirkingRevenge]

This topic often seems to lead to one of those left-right paradoxes. Like how the right hates government, but loves cops and military... while many of the left hold the inverse position.

Right-leaning people I know generally sympathize with those living in the rural blight, and their desires to stay in their hometowns and avoid displacement. Left-leaning people tend to say the rural folk need to suck it up and move to the city like everyone else, if they want better opportunities.

Then folk on either side tend to do an about-face when it comes to urban gentrification. Right-leaners tend to support gentrification and all it entails, and the left-leaners suddenly want rework local/national laws to allow the would-be displaced to remain in their homes.