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@Oliver Schick
Privatisation of London's public spaces is, of course, nothing new. We've had numerous developments featuring thoroughfares that, while accessible to the public, are actually privately owned. In former centuries, this included fairly innocent developments like shopping arcades, as well as less innocent ones like gated estates (still going strong and being newly created hundreds of years later) then expanded during the 20th century to American-style shopping malls, and around the turn of the century and in the 21st century has increasingly meant developments on land assembled from smaller plots that property companies purchased over long timescales, in some cases decades, and turned into developments like MORE London.
It is actually not in the interest of private property companies to then close such developments completely to the public by creating impermeable blocks; commercial activity is generated by accessibility to active commercial frontages. An area like Soho is a good example of this. Hence, thoroughfares that maximise availability of frontages are typically created in such developments. These feature their own 'rules', which usually differ from those in publicly-owned spaces. For instance, cycling is prohibited across MORE London.
More recently we've had the outrageous 'Garden Bridge' proposals and evident malfeasance by persons in authority and/or public office connected with it. This thread, however, was prompted by this:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/christian-candys-plans-to-turn-road-outside-his-200m-mansion-into-a-garden-are-blocked-a3340896.html