Francis Reynolds, writing for The Nation:
But the problem with privately owned public spaces is that they’re no substitution for purely public spaces, because First Amendment protections don’t really apply when the owners of a space are non-governmental. Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning and design at Harvard’s Kennedy School, says that these spaces “occupy a somewhat murky terrain in terms of what activities and conduct of public users within the space should be acceptable and what goes beyond the pale.”
Read that first sentence twice. It’s an important one.