>unreasonable

I think therein is the issue. Who is to say that the small piece of property isn't worth the "unreasonable" amount to that owner?

My home is worth $X on the market, but I don't want to sell it. Why shouldn't it be worth 10 * $x if a company wants to buy it from me? Why should I be forced to sell?

It's the time-old public/private issue; with money it's easier because it's fungible. Eminent domain has existed for millennia; this is just an aspect of it.

In general the common result seems to be that for the "public good" the government has relatively large leeway (+/- political pressure) for things like roads, freeways, transit, utilities, etc.

The line gets blurred when some of those are technically for-profit companies like some (many) utilities are. Often the end result is relatively fair for "everyone" but still the landowner is most affected (things like requiring power lines to be buried, or the power company has to build a driveway for the land owner, etc can happen). At extremes you have "town eminent domains your house so Walmart can build a parking lot on top of it."

Some cities plan very far in advance and basically put a "we will buy this property when the landowner dies" lien on it; and wait out the 30-50 years before doing the project.

For reference, here's how we used to do things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataloochee_(Great_Smoky_Mount...

>In the 1920s, the increase in tourism and the destructive effects of logging gave rise to a movement to create a national park in the Smokies. For this to happen, the residents living in the proposed park boundaries would either have to sell their land or be forced out via eminent domain. In 1928, Reverend Pat Davis broke the news to the residents of Cataloochee at Palmer's Chapel, telling them the valley was within proposed park boundaries and that they would be forced to sell. Hattie Caldwell Davis, who was at the meeting, recalled women crying and men threatening to dynamite the roads and shoot anyone who tried to enter. Some men had the idea of blocking Cove Creek Gap so the government representatives would have to come in from the Tennessee side, where Mount Sterling residents would surely stop them.

It’s not unreasonable for extremely small portions of private land to be used for infrastructure, in the exact same way that easement rights are not unreasonable. You can’t buy all the land around my lot and tell me you value right-of-way on your property at $1 billion.

This is why the government has eminent domain authority. Either take a price that you feel is fair, or hold out and let the government decide what price is fair.

Eminent domain for a public use is one thing, stealing private land and giving it to a profit taking company just because you can is another.

Using eminent domain to run utilities is a quintessential use case for eminent domain. The owner doesn't necessarily need to be forced to sell the land, they could be forced to grant an easement instead. A utility easement is something almost every land-owning American has to deal with.

An easement that forever stops me from planting a tree or building a building is not simple ROW. It is a takeover of my property.

It's not exclusively your property, because it derives a large portion of its value from existing as part of a community.

A community that requires many shared goods: water, power, transit, sewage, waste disposal, etc.

Each of which require sacrifices to be made by all so that they can functionally exist.

Absolute ownership = no shared infrastructure can be constructed = everyone's land is worth less

They require sacrifices to be made by those who preserved land. I realize that we cannot have absolute ownership. What I see in practice is that farms and open spaces are run over roughshod. Road planners try to avoid tearing through businesses and neighborhoods while gleefully destroying a century old farm. It isnt a shared infrastructure or sacrifice and you know it.

If you've got a bone to pick with planners, then you're drawing the wrong distinction.

They don't care about rural/farm vs urban/business.

They care about tax revenue and voters.

It's always going to be an uphill battle making the argument that $ tax revenue / acre farmland is more important than $$$ tax revenue / acre sub/urban use. And due to density that farmland represents one family of voters vs the >1 an equivalent urban footprint would impact.