Upscale Municipal Golfcourse Backlash

Cities increasingly face political fights when elites propose converting modest, publicly owned municipal golf courses into high‑end, designer showcases. These projects concentrate cultural capital and economic rents in visible monuments but often provoke racialized and class‑based opposition because they reallocate public land from broad access to boutique consumption. — Such redevelopment fights are a compact lens through which to examine who controls public assets, how elite vanity projects intersect with local inequality, and how politicians use visible “edifices” for prestige politics.