I honestly don't even know how to begin to explain this to you. There are highly valuable pieces of land (as happens with nice waterfronts) that developers hav

I honestly don't even know how to begin to explain this to you. There are highly valuable pieces of land (as happens with nice waterfronts) that developers have promised to make accessible to everyone in exchange for being able to develop there. They then make those places as unappealing as they can to the public by using misleading architectural cues, being less tahn helpful in enabling the access they promised, or even having guards flat-out lie about the public's access to a space. If this does not seem like a bad thing to you, and I mean this with no malice, I don't believe there is enough common ground between you and I for me to be able to explain why it is. If you think this is just a London thing, it's happening in San Francisco (which, yes, has similar issues with inequality) [1] and is an ongoing issue along the entire coast of California where the beach is public up to (at least) the high tide mark, and often with trails to get to it too. But landowners there also put up fake signs, block off access paths, and hire security guards to lie about whether the general public is allowed there or not. [1] http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/01/little-known-public-open-spaces-soon-history.html http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/01/little-known-publ...