This is also interesting...see how eminent domain was reported to have been used here -

Philadelphia Weekly: WEST PHILLY

by Jeffrey Barg (click on title for full text, this is just a brief excerpt)

Don't think for a second it hasn't all come at a very hefty, very human price.

University City's surge in retail and construction has been a boon for the neighborhood's institutions of higher learning, and for longtime residents who've seen the values of their homes rise. But some old-timers still fondly remember the Black Bottom: a tight-knit working-class neighborhood obliterated in the decades following World War II by the expansion of Penn and Drexel, which were aided and abetted by the city.

“The Black Bottom is a textbook example of institutional racist development policies,” says Billy Yalowitz, a Temple assistant professor and director of community arts who's created performance pieces about the neighborhood's history. “There's still enormous resentment among the thousands of people exiled from the destruction of that neighborhood in the '50s and '60s, and that resentment is palpable in the community surrounding the university.”

The Black Bottom, named for its largely African-American population and for its socioeconomic location at the “bottom” of West Philly, stretched from 32nd Street to 40th Street, and from University Avenue to Lancaster Avenue—encompassing most of the present-day campuses of Penn and Drexel. As Penn grew, the university bought up and leveled entire blocks, often through shady legislation and business deals, displacing an estimated 5,000 residents.

“They started buying up properties and not doing anything with them,” says Walter Palmer, a Penn professor who teaches about the destruction of the Black Bottom. “They just let those properties sit there deteriorating, creating an eyesore, and then people were pressured to sell. They had the use of eminent domain to hang over the homeowners' heads, so they could drive the prices down to where they wanted them.”

“We came across very clear documentation of practices including land banking, redlining, coercion to move under false pretenses, unscrupulous real estate practices,” says Yalowitz, “all the mechanisms of urban renewal practiced all over the country, and especially targeting poor communities of color.”