With Liverpool’s proud history of militant politics and industrial action, few residents would have predicted that it would become a poster city for the growing corporatisation of Britain’s urban spaces.

It is now possible for a visitor leaving the city’s central station to walk across the main shopping district, almost to the banks of the Mersey, on private land owned by one company. Described as a shopping, residential and leisure development, Liverpool One incorporates 34 streets, all owned by the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor estate. A huge swath of a British city centre has been effectively put into private hands. And the same phenomenon is being repeated in cities as diverse as Birmingham, Exeter, Portsmouth and Bristol.

“The situation is critical. It’s depressing that Britain is not interested in preserving its post-industrial legacy for the people,” said Bradley Garrett, academic geographer and campaign organiser.

In Liverpool, the visitor can then head towards the central docks, listed along with Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China as a world heritage site. This vast 60-acre plot – about a mile along the Mersey – is also owned by a single company which has recently made one of the biggest planning applications in the UK. Despite fears that Liverpool’s historic skyline could be ruined, the city’s council has approved Liverpool Waters’ proposals for new skyscrapers and 9,000 apartments.

A council source said Peel Holdings will be left to manage the site, empowered to sell off sections to whomever it chooses.

Over a coffee in Bluecoats arts centre – a place sociologist Paul Jones calls an “oasis” because it is surrounded by Liverpool One-owned sites – the University of Liverpool academic warns that the campaign to resist the privatisation of pivotal city space provokes a deeper question. “It’s a question of what are cities for? Who gets the right to these spaces? Who has rights to be where, when and how?”

A heatmap of Liverpool – red denoting affluence and blue deprivation – would show Liverpool One as a splodge of scarlet surrounded by a circle of blue at the city’s periphery.

Jones believes it is a profoundly undemocratic model of urban public space, welcoming to wealthy consumers – John Lewis is a flagship store – in a city that remains one of the most deprived in England.

Anna Minton, author of Ground Control, which documents the gradual privatisation of British streets, said: “It’s about whether we have a city that looks to people first and foremost as consumers, is welcoming only to a certain class of ABC1 shopper, or is a diverse, open and inclusive city that offers a wealth of experiences for all sorts of people, young and old.

“But then Liverpool One is not for the people of Liverpool, it’s basically a regional centre where you can drive straight into an underground car park, come out for an all-day shopping experience, head back and not even know you’ve been in Liverpool. It’s like a hermetically sealed bubble that could be anywhere in the world.”

Undoubtedly, Liverpool One is significantly cleaner, its streets and fittings of a higher specification than the surrounding city which suddenly feels slightly shabby in comparison.

Student Connor Campbell, 18, said he visits the development for its sense of calm. “I come here for a bit of peace, it’s less crazy here. Outside is like how Liverpool was.”

Others are less enthusiastic, complaining that it has sanitised the very essence of the city. Hair stylist Samantha Hipwell, 34, believes the development has deliberately sterilised one of the country’s most evocative cities. “It is nice but it is just lots of posh shops at the end of the day and it can feel a little bit soulless compared to other bits of Liverpool.”

Critics also claim the privatisation of urban outdoor spaces restricts the possibility of public protest. Minton said: “The right to assembly is a key political right, it’s at the heart of democratic representation from the 19th century onwards and now it’s being threatened.”

A spokesman for Grosvenor estate denied it prohibited political protest or any form of mass assembly and said it complied with local regulations. The private guards who operate in such areas have no power to arrest but critics claim they nevertheless act like the police. Minton, who also lectures at the University of East London, said: “One of my students was at Canary Wharf doing a project. There’s an art installation tucked away somewhere and he was there taking notes, but was taken to a control centre to prove who he was. These sort of places don’t welcome young people so where should they hang out?”

New developments in Birmingham have changed the city’s landscape. Photograph: David Bagnall/Rex

Some developments raise issues of legacy. The Liverpool One lease lasts 250 years, a timespan that the company says rewards the size of its investment. Yet Jones is convinced future Liverpudlians will look back and wonder why the city opted to give away so much key real estate until 2258.

“For 250 years Liverpool’s capacity to leverage private monies into the local authority have been diminished by this one agreement. It’s good for whom? A legacy for whom?”

Then there is the prospect of private companies becoming so powerful they become key players in public life. “The planning proposal for Liverpool Waters sees Peel deliver public services such as schools and training in areas of the city that are extremely deprived. The local authority cannot afford to do it,” said Jones.

Garrett believes the problem is the UK’s dedication to a regeneration model that raises cash but neglects cultural priorities. Partly to blame, he says, is the government’s austerity agenda, which has forced cash-strapped councils to sell off land to developers, often at unfavourable terms for the public.

Garrett compares the UK model with Germany whose post-industrial landscape is being preserved for future generations. In Duisburg, in the Ruhr basin, huge steel and iron works have effectively been kept as public art installations. By contrast, say critics, the UK approach is often so secretive that land agreements are opaque.

Jones said: “If you look at these developments, London’s King’s Cross and the South Bank for instance, they do in effect become black boxes, very difficult to illuminate for journalists, academics and communities interested in what’s going on in their cities.”

Other places where disquiet has surfaced over the privatisation of key public spaces include Bristol, where the centre is now dominated by the huge shopping development of Cabot Circus, which has been blamed for the closure of smaller stores in a city that prides itself on localism.

In Birmingham Brindleyplace – which boasts of its “tree-lined squares, international cuisine and … enviable canalside location” – has provoked a similar debate to that in Liverpool. In Exeter, the Princesshay “shopping destination featuring over 60 shops, set in a series of interconnecting open streets and squares” has also raised concerns.

The new King’s Cross development at Granary Square, around the same size as Trafalgar Square, is also a highly securitised area where photographers have been removed by private guards if they are unable to produce a permit. Shiny, gleaming, sanitised, the rise of privately owned public space in Britain’s cities goes on.