London's Garden Bridge Gates Public Access

Oliver Wainwright reports that the proposed Garden Bridge in London will have very specific limitations on its use. For example, group of eight or more will require special permission to visit the bridge, riding bikes will be prohibited, and the bridge will be closed at night.

"Such a measure suggests that the garden bridge, as its critics have suspected, is not in fact a bridge – in the sense of being a public right of way across the river – but another privately managed tourist attraction, on which £60m of public money is to be lavished," writes Wainwright.

"Having received planning permission from Lambeth council last week – the first hurdle in a process that will be followed by Westminster’s decision next month, before swooshing across the mayor’s lubricated planning desk then passing under the nose of Eric Pickles – a series of conditions has emerged that make the project look rather less public than first imagined."

For those keeping track at home, the designer of London's proposed garden bridge is the same Thomas Heatherwick who has designed the recently announced Pier 55 offshore park plan in Manhattan—a connection that did not go unnoticed by Kriston Capps in an article this week about the prevalence of offshore parks in recent years.