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Shattering 'Blight' And The Hidden Narratives That Condemn, Patricia Hureston Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Tilting at windmills is an expression used to describe Don Quixote’s battle against perceived giants that everyone else sees merely as windmills. This expression can also describe the predicament of St. Louis Place property owners who fought against a combination of case law, statutes, governmental condemnation decisions and an unflattering narrative to save their property. In the end, St. Louis Place property owners might as well have been fighting windmills.

Since Berman v. Parker, legal scholars have challenged the definition of the term blight and the manner in which condemnation takings are used as revitalization tools in distressed communities. Attempts …