The New York Times has a helpful article on how New York's broad definition of "blight" has enabled the state to declare the area around Penn Station in New York City to be declared blighted, and therefore open to the use of eminent domain to condemn property for transfer to private interests:
The congested, chaotic section of Manhattan near Pennsylvania Station, which teems with tourists, commuters and shoppers, is undeniably drab. Does that make it blighted?
New York State has decreed that it is, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has recently likened the Penn Station area to "a Skid Row neighborhood." She was defending the controversial plan to allow developers to build 10 towers around the decrepit train station — the busiest transit hub in the nation — in exchange for some of the $7 billion the state needs to renovate it.
If New York State officials deem an urban area to be "blighted," blocks can be bulldozed and people and businesses can be forced to relocate. And new towers — unbound by limits on size and height as defined by the city's normal planning rules — can rise.
The state's authority to make such a determination and move forward with redevelopment is nearly impossible to contest….
Over the past 15 years, dozens of states have placed limitations on when they can take ownership of private property. But not New York State, which has among the fewest restrictions on its power to rebuild areas in the name of economic development, according to the Institute of Justice, a libertarian policy group that tracks the issue.
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