A Class Approach to Municipal Privatization: The Privatization of New York City's Central Park

Abstract

AbstractThe privatization of New York City's Central Park in 1998 was among the most high-profile municipal privatizations in the US during the 1990s. Since then, the park's privatization has been cited as an exemplary model of privatization. This essay develops a unique class approach to municipal privatization and uses it to reconceptualize Central Park's privatization. In doing so, it argues that the park's privatization involves an important contradiction—one that regards its ostensible status as one of the nation's most famous and treasuredpublicgoods against its production as acapitalist commodity. This class approach to the park's privatization yields four insights. First, it underscores the limitations of the hegemonic cost-efficiency calculus that has long informed the municipal privatization discourse. Second, it raises important questions regarding the troublesome relationship between democratic principles and capitalist production relations. Third, it offers an alternative to a wage-led approach to privatization. Finally, and paradoxically, it provides a framework for theorizing “progressive” privatizations.