The places mentioned in the article (Granary Square, More London, Canary Wharf, etc.) were never public spaces.
They were predominately disused or abandoned industrial areas that have been developed to become vibrant and attractive places to live and work, creating entirely new 'public' spaces in the process.
You don't have public bid rules for government sales / purchases?
On the other end of the spectrum, though, you will find plenty of examples of cultures - and nation states - where there is a historic assumption that the public good and/or liberty requires substantial restrictions on property rights, on the basis that land is a scarce resource and that while some property rights are necessary, or even desirable for the economic benefits it may bring, other such rights severely restricts the liberty of everyone else by depriving them of access, or actively harms society (e.g. most places place restrictions on carrying out various dangerous activities on your property without appropriate permissions).
For my part, the shock of moving to London (from Norway) where many parks have gates that are locked at night, was something I have still not quite gotten over - 17 years later. It feels oppressive, after being used to open spaces - most parks in Oslo have no gates or fences, and most of those that do have large gaps and any fencing is largely to block specific routes. Part of this is more public lands, part of it is a culture where fencing in semi-public private spaces is largely still seen as offensive restrictions on others freedom, helped by extensive rights of access ("freedom to roam") outside urban areas that gets people used to expect to be free to access open spaces.
To me the idea of liberty in a society with strict property rights makes a total mockery of liberty.
I believe that only through strong property protections can we experience liberty: when one's ownership in property is secure, then one may plan for the future. Conversely, when one's control of property is subject to the arbitrary whims of the state, then one may not plan for the future, and economic growth is not possible.
Many poor nations, for instance, have terrible land title systems, and the land may be taken from you by the local magistrate if you are not the proper color / religion / race or have not paid the proper bribes. Such is not a good environment in which to experience liberty. Sure, your empty field will always be open for the public to play football, but there will never be a factory in that field providing jobs and improving the general prosperity.
I won't attempt to tackle "the public good" or "actively harms society" here.
(I'm assuming that when you mention property that you mean "outside, unenclosed spaces." Do you also extend your view to the buildings on property? Offices? Private homes?)
In the US approximately 60% of households owned their home however of those most are owned by the bank. Only a steadily decreasing fraction are actually owned free and clear by those who reside there.
Most of the US is in fact divided among those who will be kicked out next month if they don't make their rent and a higher class of renter who will be kicked out several months later if he doesn't catch up his mortgage payments.
Both classes have little savings and may easily be a lost job away from homelessness.
There is not a single country in the world today that offers you absolute property rights, because it actively harms those around you.
You are conflating the lack of absolute property rights with the other extreme.
> I won't attempt to tackle "the public good" or "actively harms society" here.
So in other words you constructed a strawman and didn't address the actual issue at all. The actual issue is the public good and the active harm to society and your neighbours that allowing anything near absolute property rights bring.
Compare to the Nordic countries where e.g. it is actively illegal to e.g. fence in a privately owned forest most places, and barring restrictions on disturbing farm animals or ruining crops you can walk almost anywhere in rural areas, freely pick berries (outside of planted fields), mushrooms etc. even on private land, and even camp without needing to ask permission (but custom is to ask where it is convenient if you want to do so e.g. near a farm).
Norway (the others might too, but it's Norway I know about) also have strict legal restrictions on building near the sea and blocking access to beaches etc. to protect public access.
I know this system is broken - I firmly believe that if voting were able to make a difference, it would immediately be made illegal. That is the fight we must fight - that is the root cause of the problem.
They can just shrug and say "it's private land."
(I'm talking about cases where the gov sold public land to a private entity, not where a private entity just opened up their property)
(Source: Working in Canary Wharf on and off for 8 years)
Given that e.g. large parts of the pedestrian routes along the Thames for example are private, there substantial stretches where you can't even stand and take pictures of the river where no part of said private property features in the picture, because the property owners have instructed their security to just blanket refuse all permission to take pictures.
Owners of privately-owned public spaces (POPS) need not delineate their property boundaries, or provide any kind of indication when someone may be crossing from a truly public space into a POPS. Owners of POPS may establish rules of acceptable conduct for their space, but are not required to publish them. The only way to discover what those rules are is by breaking one, at which time they may be enforced without prior warning, and with no due process or appeal. The rules may be changed at any time, for any reason, with no notice.
That system is so arbitrary and capricious, and so broken, that I can only conclude that it is entirely incompatible with liberal democracy. It is the very soul of plutocratic, pseudo-libertarian oligarchy.
How do you feel when you enter public (government) property, but they make available for you thousands of pages of by-laws that govern your behaviour? Is it oppressive?
Malls have no entry fee, but they often post their rules on their websites. I don't feel very oppressed by them, because I don't frequent malls much. I didn't even visit often back when they were popular. Places like Universal City Walk or Disney Springs in Orlando are actually like Hell for me, crowded, noisy, and commercial, and I am pretty uncomfortable with how the Reedy Creek Improvement District is like an independent fiefdom, and the acme of all tourist traps. It sometimes feels like you could be black-bagged and whisked away just for showing too much stress on your face and not having enough money in your pockets.
Yes, that's oppressive. And creepy. I don't like it when people look at me like I'm either an overflowing bag of cash to be drained or an unpleasant insect to be shooed away.
Rules for public land use are frequently organized by intent, and one does not need to read every last rule on every last page to enjoy any particular use. If you are just day-hiking, you don't need to read the parts about hunting or overnight camping. If you also want to camp or hunt, you can read those sections and not also the parts about cell tower sites or water rights. You also have the knowledge that if any rule for use of public land conflicts with your rights, it is void from the start, and if someone attempts to enforce it against you, you will likely eventually get some compensation.
But I have also read some of those thousands of pages of rules, and in some municipalities, yes, they are oppressive. In others, they are mostly reasonable. That also depends in part on the strictness and uniformity of enforcement. Policing for profit can make reasonable rules oppressive, and oppressive rules, laxly enforced, don't seem quite so bad when there is no real penalty for breaking them. In either case, the locals usually have some means by which to change the rules that they may disagree with, including loud and well-attended protest demonstrations.
The danger of POPS is that they replace some of the functions of truly public spaces, while leaving out one or more vital functions (like protest and free expression), then those public spaces wither and die, leaving people effectively unable to exercise the vital functions.