73 
Can the acquisition or control of a vacant, unblighted tract of land be 
a public purpose if the land is used immediately for a new community? 
Now the focus will shift to issues of future use while addressing the 
following question: Assuming it is valid to build the community im- 
mediately, does it make any difference that the new community will 
not be built on the land for a few years? 
The previous section’s historical examination of public use as it 
relates to present use indicated that the concept has continually been 
expanded by the courts for over a century. Interestingly, as far as 
future use is concerned, the judiciary’s interpretations have been al- 
most as expansive. The issue has actually been faced only once in 
Massachusetts when, in 1952, the court ruled positively on the ques- 
tion, thereby allowing a future use to be called a public use even though 
it was not even certain that the government’s planned use for the 
land would ever materialize.” 
Earlier cases in other States show a more restrictive view toward 
future use. The focus used to be on three things: the ultimate use, the 
specificity of how and when it was to be used, and the necessity of the 
use. That is to say, if the ultimate use was specific, actually public, 
and necessary, then it would be permitted.” 
In spite of the liberalization of the future use aspect of the public 
use concept, it still appears that the present use doctrine may be more 
expansive, because only in the latter case have the courts talked about 
permissible activity beyond actual public use. 
To date there have been no reported urban renewal cases where 
land acquisition was authorized by a court that knew there would be 
no replacement of the blighted area with new development until 
some distant date. Thus, a showing of future public purpose is probably 
not sufficient to substantiate a present acquisition. Ironically, it 
seems that such a conclusion may represent a distorted perspective, 
drawn, as it were, from an examination of the issue while wearing the 
blinders of the case law. Because, if instead of examing judicially 
reported cases, an empirical study were conducted for the subjects of 
these cases, a different conclusion might be drawn. Indeed, a current 
survey of American urban renewal would reveal many instances where 
blighted development was razed and no new development has followed. 
Moreover, there are a surprising number of these cases where the 
projects have remained vacant for nearly 20 years. Certainly in these 
types of cases it is difficult to argue that the proposed replacement 
use is a present use. 
An important issue raised by these empirical findings has to do 
with the question of which act provides the public purpose. Is it the 
removal of the blight? Is it the development of replacement buildings? 
Or, is it the two acts together which make the whole thing a public 
purpose? The answer seems to be that it is the two acts taken together. 
As has been shown earlier, it is clear that the first act (removal of 
blight) by itself provides public benefit.* It is less clear that the 
second act (subsequent development) by itself serves a public pur- 
pose; in fact, it can be convincingly argued that the second act 
does not serve the public purpose, and that the legitimacy of the 
71 Sellers v. Town of Concord, 107 N.E. 2d 784, Mass. (1952). 
72 People v. Fisher, 190 N.Y. 468 477, 83 N.E, 482 (1908). This was a New York case where the State took 
and that it was going to use for a canal that was necessary for a linkage. 
73 Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 75 Sup. Ct. 98, 99 L. Ed. 27 (1954). 
