Appropriation of public space

Abstract

The creation of public spaces is the central focus of urban design as a discipline intended to contribute social activities, cultural production, and political expression to a city infrastructure. However, assessing the publicness of these spaces reveals they are shaped as the aftermath of larger development strategies. This chapter builds a deeper understanding of so-called ‘intention-outcome gap’ in urban design, embedded in spatial production process, to explore the driving forces of transforming publicness. The authors highlight the potentials of appropriations by which space becomes public in action, and the efforts of those whose regular presence, togetherness, and encounters contest the intended publicness. Appropriations expose the less visible conditions by which publicness is transformed, and denote a critical politics rather than just policies for designing public space. Through the lens of appropriation, the authors argue for a dialectical approach to urban design to address a necessary shift in understanding of urban design knowledge, outcome and influences in designing publicness.