The quote in last Tuesday’s Bozeman Daily Chronicle – the paper of record in Bozeman, Mont., population 35,000, where my wife and I can often be found roaming the mountains – fairly leaped off the page: “Blight is downtown Detroit; it’s not Bozeman, Montana.”

The person being quoted was one Jackie Wilson, described as living in a corner of Bozeman that the city fathers had just declared “blighted,” the first step in preparing an “urban renewal” plan. Wilson appeared to have a point. My wife and I happened to be driving through the “blighted” area the next day, and while some of the residential and commercial structures might be described as a bit ramshackle, it would be a stretch – at least for somebody from Detroit – to call the area blighted.

Thus it was no surprise that residents, concerned that the urban renewal plan is only a plot to throw them out of their homes to make way for the wealthy yuppies flocking to the Rocky Mountain’s Front Range in search of “lifestyle,” jammed the city commission to protest the designation. “This is the last community in Bozeman still barely affordable and I’d like to see it stay the same,” asserted Wilson.

Similar fears are rampant in other communities across the country in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling sharply expanding government’s power to condemn private property on behalf of developers so long as it serves a “public purpose” – including more tax revenue for the politicians to play with. The decision was a sharp departure from the traditional understanding of the Fifth Amendment, which allows takings for a “public use” so long as just compensation is paid.

In San Diego, for example, the historic Little Italy neighborhood has been declared blighted, leading to an outcry in favor of an amendment to the California constitution that would forbid taking private property for the benefit of another private interest. Indeed, a Scripps-Howard news service survey found that no fewer than 27 states are looking at such changes to their laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision.

Critics like to quote a 1798 Supreme Court precedent that a “law that takes property from A and gives it to B” is “against all reason and justice.” But it also is against all economic reason. There are admittedly shades of gray – traditional “public use” doctrine allowed takings for railroads in the 19th century, for example – but where property rights aren’t reasonably secure, you aren’t going to find much investment and growth.

Bozeman is hardly in danger of becoming a Detroit. But much of the robust growth in the area is going to outlying areas, leading to calls for an attack on “sprawl.” Never mind that a big part of the reason for sprawl around Bozeman, as around other, much larger cities, is precisely the high taxes and onerous regulations enacted by the city itself. Rather than reduce those taxes and regulations, Bozeman, like many other cities, is demanding controls on growth beyond its borders.

“While growth benefits the community, a more sustainable and efficient development strategy needs to be implemented,” insists a planning document produced by consultants to the real estate interests seeking the Bozeman urban renewal plan.

Sustainable? Efficient? Those are key words in the progressive lexicon. But for the people who live in the affected areas, like Jackie Wilson, they are cold words indeed. Such progressive mumbo-jumbo is simply gloss for the old business of using government to forcibly transfer wealth from one group of people to another – aka, theft.

It’s a classic case of how bad government tends to produce … more bad government. Growth controls, like urban renewal – known around older cities like Detroit as “urban removal” – will only succeed in sending growth even farther into the countryside while driving up prices for existing housing.

If it’s urban renewal you really want, do it the old-fashioned way – by letting developers buy “blighted” property from willing sellers. The result is far more likely to yield an interesting, vibrant city than cookie-cutter developments that are so often a blight in themselves.

Mr. Bray is a Detroit News columnist.