Our backyard backs onto a green space. The only way someone can get to the green space is to walk through our backyard or parachute in. Effectively our yard goes from 1/2 acre to 1 acre when including the green space. Basically we have taken ownership of it since only we can access it. It is definitely a selling point for the house.
There is a creek on one side. On the other side of the creek is more green space and another house. On either side of our house are other houses that back up to their own slices of the green space. Everyone has an agreement that we won’t go into anyone else’s part of the green space. Other people don’t have a way to access the green space without going through someone yard. Technically at either end they could get into the green space, but there is a forest without any paths and lots of blackberry plants and poison Ivy blocking the way. In all the years we’ve lived here, I’ve never seen anyone attempt it.
Based on this ruling and the cited prior case law I would not want to take that to court. It's fairly clear that the govt will uphold public access to public land, with a fallback of eminent domain (seizure for fair compensation) of private land in order to facilitate public access.
A prior case has a situation where the govt seized land to build a road to allow public access. The ruling was that the govt could not do such a thing without fair compensation.
