Author warns of ‘threat to national psyche’ as campaigners rally outside City Hall to protest at corporate takeover of streets and squares

The spiritual wellbeing of our cities is being eroded by the creeping corporatisation and privatisation of its public spaces, the author Will Self has warned.

Addressing the first “public space intervention” to protest against the fact that sizeable chunks of London are falling into corporate hands, Self said the trend was having a deleterious impact on the capital’s residents.

Public spaces in Britain's cities fall into private hands Read more

“What people don’t understand is that it does affect you psychically. It constrains you in how you think about what you can do in a space, and it constrains your imagination. It’s like a condensing of time and money and space – it needs to be resisted.”

Self added: “The kind of ludic, playful potential of living in a city is being significantly impoverished by this kind of stuff.”

The author was one of the speakers at a growing campaign to preserve UK cities for their residents. Protesters on Saturday cited London’s Canary Wharf, Olympic Park and the Broadgate development in the City as public places now governed by the rules of the corporations that own them.

Privatised public zones are appearing throughout Britain and include Birmingham’s Brindleyplace, a significant canalside development. In Exeter, there is Princesshay, described as a “shopping destination featuring over 60 shops set in a series of interconnecting open streets and squares”. The spaces there are owned and run by property group Land Securities along with the monarch’s property portfolio, the Crown Estate. In addition, Land Securities owns a large waterside complex of shops, bars and restaurants in Portsmouth.

Comedian Mark Thomas talking at the same event.

Writer Anna Minton said that in London the proposed Garden Bridge was symbolic of the trend, pointing to the fact that despite using £60m of public money it would be plagued by corporate restrictions: cyclists would have to dismount to cross while social gatherings, playing musical instruments, making a speech, releasing balloons and many other pursuits would be banned.

Asked what he thought of the Garden Bridge, Self replied: “It could be great – it will be shit.”

Described as both a “public space intervention” and a “mass trespass”, the protest included a series of speakers defending the rights of urban residents as free-roaming citizens. Among them was comedian Mark Thomas, who attacked the coalition government’s introduction of the Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) which allows councils to make illegal activities such as sleeping rough in an attempt to drive homeless people from town or city centres.

London's garden bridge: the end of the road? Read more

Campaigners gathered on a patch of grass near City Hall on the banks of the Thames, chosen because it gives visitors the illusion of being a public space but is in fact controlled by private security, with its own set of regulations. Tourists can be admonished just for taking a photo, as Assembly Member Jenny Jones discovered while taking a picture of her place of work.

Gesturing to the surrounds, Self said: “How anybody can think this is one of the nicest parts of London. It can only be because they have been deprived of the capacity to make free choices of their own: you’re told what to do in a space like this, the very architecture tells us.”

Self added: “This is part of a gathering campaign to resist what I call ‘piss-pots’, Public Space Protection Orders which are a kind of extension of the law into the very psyche of the urban stroller. This is non-trivial.”

Other speakers at the event included comedian Mark Thomas and Sian Berry, Green party candidate for mayor of London, who pledged to introduce rules to ensure that new publicly accessible spaces in the capital were governed by the law of the land. Her modification of the London Plan would prevent controversial projects such as the Garden Bridge excluding the public at the request of its owners.