The Extinction Rebellion protest in London deleted the cars from Waterloo Bridge and with little effort created a public space that the Garden Bridge would never have been, says Christine Murray.

London finally got its garden bridge last week. No designer was involved and it didn't cost a penny of public money.
It happened, briefly, when Extinction Rebellion shut down traffic at four locations in London including Waterloo Bridge, in a non-violent civil action to raise awareness about climate change.
Within 24 hours the bridge, renamed Waterloo Garden Bridge, was a thriving, treelined urban space, with a bandstand, wellness tent, skatepark, market kitchen and information point. By the time it was stripped away, a petition to keep it forever had garnered 1,000 signatures. Compare this crossing to the £200 million failed Garden Bridge project by Thomas Heatherwick, and the architects of that fiasco look like the weavers in The Emperor's New Clothes. The Garden Bridge cost £53 million without ever being built, including £21.4 million paid to contractor Bouygues, 1.3 million spent searching the Thames for unexploded bombs, £2.7 million on Heatherwick's design, £13 million on Arup's engineering and £161,000 on a website.
In contrast, it's amazing how little effort it took to make Waterloo Garden Bridge. Crowdsourced on Facebook, protesters were encouraged to bring plants, compost, straw bales and pop-up pagodas. Activists brought in large potted trees ? I watched two ...