[Wintamute]

I find your comment somewhat alarmist, and lacking historical context. The City of London (from which the Temple end of the Garden Bridge starts) is many many hundreds of years older than the UK itself, and has always been privately owned and governed by shadowy, corporate and arcane processes. Traditionally even the Queen is not allowed to enter the City of London without the say-so of the Lord Mayor. This "private place operating as a public space" has been operating for centuries and stewarded the emergence of London as a leading global financial centre and until recently capital of the largest Empire the world has ever seen.

I admit it's reasonable to debate the pros and cons of private ownership of public spaces in city centres, but my point is that in this case The City of London is both historically unique and important, and by many measures been a huge success for the host nation.

Informative/fun video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

[jarek]

The bridge is a particularly contentious subject since it's funded by tens of millions of pounds of public money. If The City wants an independent bridge, surely it shouldn't be a problem to stump 40 million rather than asking TfL as if this was a major transport project.

Though yes, all the fuss is slightly ironic in the city where most central greenspaces are property of Royal Parks.

[pjc50]

privately owned

I think that's also misleading; it's not a 'corporation'=='limited liability company with shares'. It's not a "capitalist" institution, it's a pre-capitalist feudal institution that predates the LLC by centuries. It's an elected local body with an unusual electorate.

[scholia]

The bridge (if built) will be owned by a charitable trust, and government funding covers roughly one third of the projected cost.

[jsingleton]

I would have thought that the City of London Corporation would be opposed to Wi-Fi tracking. Given their negative reaction when they discovered that the street bins were tracking people [0]. The technology in question was Presence Orb [1].

It's a good idea to turn Wi-Fi off when you leave home/work. This also avoids the issue of captive portals with gated internet access capturing your phone and disabling your data connection. I'm looking at you TfL.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/city-london-cor...

[1] http://www.presenceorb.com