Stop worrying about the privatisation of public spaces, says Owen Hopkins, because the biggest threat to our democracy is the internet.

It's hard to believe the web is still just 30 years old. Despite the extraordinary ways it and the world have changed over that time, there's one early adage that still holds firm. Conceived by American attorney Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law, as it has become known, states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".
I was reminded of this recently, when it was announced that the winning entry for the commission to curate the British Pavilion at next year's Venice Architecture Biennale would be exploring the "creeping epidemic" of privatised public space across Britain's cities. It's a live and contentious subject that has sparked a huge amount of debate in architectural circles and beyond, yet to my mind mostly misses the point.
What's important is how a space is managed, where it's located, what amenities it offers and how people interact in it, rather than whether it is publicly or privately owned
Public space does not exist in the abstract. What's important is how a space is managed, where it's located, what amenities it offers and how people interact in it, rather than whether it is publicly or privately owned. Obsessing about ownership is fundamentally misguided. What matters far more is whether the space allows for the types of social in...