Unless raised land taxes based on the revised real estate value meant a low-margin farm could no longer stay in the black.
Unless, of course, the encroaching suburb decided that they needed that land for new housing for the growing population.
Eminent domain, I believe it’s called.
Eminent domain is rarely invoked to build housing. Not that it can’t be, but it typically isn’t.
Yeah. Very rarely eminent domain.
Much more likely so-called “highest best use”. Which means setting the tax rate as if the land was used for the activity that could produce the most tax revenue. Even if the land is really used for something else where the new vastly higher tax rate makes the old use unprofitable. Which essentially forces the landowner to change the land to the other use or sell it to someone who can.
Overall, people should not be tied to land. Peasantry was a bad deal for everyone. Folks who think they can’t move because grandad plowed this dirt are prisoners; not yeoman / freeman. If we could eliminate humans’ misplaced attachment to specific plots of dirt we could eliminate about half the casus belli worldwide at a stroke. It’s just dirt; there’s more elsewhere.
Yes, bad choice of words on my part. Annexation and/or rezoning from agricultural to residential would have been better phrasing.
Yeah, that happens all the time. Often at the politically-connected property owner/developer’s request.
And when the land was rezoned from agricultural to residential, its value shot up, so the farm owner could sell (at a substantial profit) and buy farmland further out. Or they could retire and live comfortably. How is that a loss to them?