70 
blighted open area that lay in the path of, and interfered with, the 
sound growth of the city.” i 
In making that finding, the court said ‘consideration may properly 
be given to the prevention of the development of slums adjacent to the 
blight.” ® And in 1969, the court deferred to a legislative program 
of preventive action whose purpose was the ‘‘permanent elimination of 
slums in the project areas by preventing their initial growth.” 
Taken together these last two cases suggest an approach to drafting 
new communities legislation to assure that the corporation’s activities 
are interpreted as public purposes justifying eminent domain powers. 
Because of the Dodge opinion, the legislation should stress the urbaniz- 
ing nature of the land to be used for the new community and should 
define urbanizing in terms of the land’s lying in the path of the growth 
of the nearest metropolitan center. Then, because of the Massachusetts 
Housing Finance Agency opinion, the findings should stress that the 
new communities, by providing a mix of living and occupational op- 
portunities, will prevent the growth of slum conditions within the new 
entity itself and, by relieving the population pressure in the adjacent 
on will complement the slum clearance programs already in operation 
there.® 
A third factor supporting the public purpose of new communities 
legislation is the emphasis the case places on a continuing regulation of 
projects by a public body.® Although the cases do not make clear the 
extent to which control by a public body must be maintained to pro- 
tect the public purpose status of the project, the regulation of a new 
community site, at least during its development, seems sufficiently 
thoroughgoing in the proposed statute to make use of this factor. 
Finally, an analysis of the ‘‘Opinion of the Justices’ invalidating 
the statute to construct a stadium complex and associated roadways 
suggests a finding of public purpose in the new communities legislation. 
The court reasoned in that case that even a large multipurpose stadium 
for public events could be for a public purpose, if the expenditure of 
public funds and the extension of public privileges, powers and 
exemptions were adequately governed by appropriate standards and 
principles set out in the legislation itself. But, the court continues, 
provision of such facilities is not as ‘‘clearly and directly” a public 
purpose as supplying housing, slum clearance, mass transportation, 
highways and vehicular tunnels, educational facilities, and other neces- 
sities. As to such essential enterprises the public objectives are well 
understood.” 
Moving from that analysis to a new communities statute, one finds 
that the very facilities whose provision the court. has found most 
“clearly and directly” to be public purposes are the very facilities that 
new communities are designed to provide. Furthermore, the proposed 
statute clearly sets out (sec. 8) the very kinds of principles and stand- 
ards necessarily precedent to land acquisition that would quiet both 
61 Dodge vy. Prudential Insurance Co. of America, 343 Mass. 375, 179 N.E. 2d 234 (1961). 
fe Api, at 383, 179 N.E. 2d at 241. 
68 Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency v. New England Merchants National Bank of Boston, 1969 Mass. 
Ady. Sheets 987, 249 N.E. 2d 599 (1969). , ; 
$4 Mass. Const. am. art. 43 already permits the General Court to take, improve, build on, and resell land 
“for the purpose of relieving congestion of population and providing homes for citizens.” By only a slight 
extension of its reasoning, the condemnation of land by a corporation for development of new communities 
ee de eee nou : 
65 Opinion of the Justices, 341 Mass. 760, 168 N.E. 2d 858 (1960), Opinion of the Justi 334 Mass. 760 
Di NE ae Gist. F (1960), Op e Justices, ass 
66 “‘Opinion of the Justices’, 1961 Mass. Adv. Sheets 1171, 1188, 250 N.E. 2d 547, 558 (1969). 
87 Tbid., at 1189, 250 N.E. 2d at 558. ‘ aie 
