As I stated yesterday (and people had real trouble with this), the PRECEDENTS in American history go all the way back to the "mill acts" of the 1830s. Justice Thomas addressed this, sort of, but not very well.
First, when you combine the "mill acts," the American Revolutionary notion of property taxation to prevent large estates from building up, and "squatter's rights," you created in this nation a bias for development. It is NOT just this one act or city action that is at issue here, but the whole American predeliction for development.
Second, given that---and that courts are REALLY hesitant to overrule 170 years' worth of judisprudence (i.e., say, "no, the courts have all been wrong all these years), the USSC was likely to rule for the city.
Third, what we as conservatives then need to get realistic about is that PROBABLY (I haven't looked at the arguments, but I'm guessing) the homeowners' arguments were from a purely private-property standpoing---which is where most Freepers come down. That argument was the wrong argument legally in this case.
What the homeowners should have done was to base their case on the fact that they had "developed" their property; that homes contribute more to the "public good" than do malls (and here I would have brought in a bunch of econometric models to show that these malls usually fail and COST the city money; that improving homes was CONSISTENT with squatter's rights and the mill acts. Instead, they fought against these trends on grounds of "pristine property rights." (again, as best I can tell, esp. looking at Thomas's dissent).
Realize that there is a deep-seated American preference for development and for penalizing "barons" who just sit on their land, and that whatever legal arguments the homeowners made needed to stem from that, not from (what I think are right) Constitutional claims of "pristine property ownership.
Can you see what I'm saying here? I think the lawyers for the homeowners blew it, and that it would have taken a remarkably radical court to overturn so much established law.
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