The city could have refused to buy the land for $10 if they didn't agree to the terms. Or claim eminent domain and pay a fair price maybe.

> Gift your house to the city with a deed that says they have to rent it back to you forever for $1 a year?

What if I write a note saying that you need to pay me $10,000? That's not a contract, that's just a fever dream. But if you shake my hand and sign that piece of paper, that's a different story.

The same applies here. If you get the city to agree (and they don't get raided by the FBI after that), then sure, they should be bound by the deal they made.

Note that this works both ways. If you own nice rural acreage, the federal or state government will often be happy to pay you some token amount and give you a tax break for a conservation easement that prevents not only you, but all future owners, from using the land in certain ways. It's still yours, but it's now a scenic corridor and you can't build there anymore. There's plenty of such easements in California and other Western states. If I'm bound by such a perpetual, deed-attached restriction, why can't the government be?

If they don’t want to use it for the agreed upon purpose, they could either offer to pay the true value so they can use it for something else or give it back to the farmer/heirs.

The real problem seems to be one city gave the land to a parks nonprofit who then sold it to another city, but the original park intent did not follow those sales.

Yes. Society doesn't work if the government is above contract law. If the city can't abide by it's contracts it should not enter into them. Unlike abusive software TOSs the sale was/is not self executing/binding/changed after the fact. The city chose to enter into it with their eyes open.

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