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I think the seizure of land for uses society deems appropriate is reasonable, providing reasonable compensation is made. It's unfortunate when a highway goes through an area of homes, but what can you do? Same with blight, Detroit has more abandoned homes than inhabited in a lot of neighborhoods.
The recent trend in seizing property for commercial rezoning, however, seems to be excessive; the primary seems to be governmental greed. I think the government should take measures to ensure that the original property owner was the primary beneficiary of the newly created property and tax-based wealth, but as it is, they might seize a home, pay the owner $100,000 because it's run down, rezone the property as commercial, sell it to Starbucks for $500,000, collect $25,000 in property taxes and another $10,000 in other business taxes. If instead they gave the home owner the rezoned property value (e.g., paid them $500,000) and maybe ten years worth of the added tax revenue, that would take away any greed motive from the government, so they'd have to evaluate the seizure based only on the societal benefit of the rezoning. The home owner, while they might still not want to do the deal, at least would be generously compensated. Of course if they were that generously compensated, they'd probably voluntarily sell the home anyway, so seizure wouldn't be necessary.
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