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.
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.
A fair system would be blind to what is on the ground and build the lines or roads without regard to who owns it or what is in the way. Otherwise the poor and rural will always be looked at as cheap useless fools to be taken advantage of.
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.
