ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs a class analysis of Central Park’s privatization. The first part of the chapter sketches the historical backdrop to the park’s privatization. A class analytic interpretation of the park’s privatization is then presented. This interpretation holds that the privatization process commodified the park. A class analysis of the organization that produces Central Park qua commodity (the Central Park Conservancy (CPC)) comprises the chapter’s final section. This analysis reveals that the CPC produces the park via a capitalist class process. Thus, Central Park, one of the nation’s most famous and treasured public goods, is, I argue, a capitalist commodity. The implications of this finding are developed in Chapter Five.
