The creation of public space is intended to contribute to the civic infrastructure of a city. The conventional dichotomy of intentions versus outcomes in urban design practice posits that, while intentions represent more abstract thinking about the various facets of publicness, outcomes are the manifest realizations of those intentions in public spaces. This study grounds itself in an exploration of this intention-outcome gap to examine how urban design facilitates the production of publicness, by means of which public spaces can enable appropriations, i.e., the practices of togetherness, encounters, and expressions of different publics. Analysing the appropriations as unintended consequences is about the planning and design process, by which publicness is produced through larger strategies; and, the process of use, by which publicness is socially experienced and contested.

This research applies a comparative case study approach, as examples of brownfield developments and producing ‘city-like’ (stadsmässighet) urban environments in two practices in Sweden: the Liljeholmstorget Transit Hub in Stockholm and the Western Harbour Waterfront in Malmö. The Liljeholmstorget examines negotiations of land uses and trade-offs with private actors, and its publicness addresses informal togetherness and passive encounters in relation to collective routines of commuting and consumption. The Western Harbour Waterfront reveals a determined process to promote the city’s economic growth and image; planned for the well-being of a specific type of public, which was later contested by unexpected users and their unplanned expressions.

Comparative analysis demonstrates appropriations as welcome phenomena in urban design because they emphasize the dynamic and contingent characteristics of publicness.