The Right to the City, Public Space, and Free Speech

Abstract

In January 2022, Salford Council in Greater Manchester granted permission to the property and investment business, Legal and General Investment Management, to build a new hotel and offices at Ralli Quays in Salford. Controversially, the plans include closing a 300-year-old riverside public footpath. Pedestrians would instead be diverted through a new walkway through the hotel site, but which would also be shut to the public between dawn and dusk (Richardson 2022). Campaigners soon mobilised to oppose the plans and to argue that people had a ‘fundamental right’ to walk along the river, which ‘should not be sacrificed for private gain’ (Pidd 2022). Their tactics included successfully canvassing for a public inquiry into the potential removal of Public Rights of Way along this section of the river by Ralli Quays.