You’re right, but history shows the bigger asymmetry, and it’s fallen hard on Black landowners. “Full market value” still can’t buy back a community.

That’s the mid-century highway pattern: take the least protected routes, displace Black families, then leave a permanent barrier that splits neighborhoods, drains commerce, and locks in decades of disinvestment.

Pay them fairly, sure.
The real theft is the long-run one: once the corridor goes in, the community doesn’t come back.