Parking garages belong to the basic inventory of today’s cities, however their existence and contribution to the urban fabric is marginally discussed under the urban themes of structural transformation, environmental underperformance and socio-cultural fragmentation. This thesis is a study of parking infrastructure in the inner-city of Malmö with a particular focus on rooftops as spaces of opportunities for a sustainable urban development.The thesis aims to investigate whether an integration of parking garages into the urban fabric of their local environment can contribute to a more equal, mixed-use city development through adaptive reuse of the rooftops as public green spaces.Based on a literature review on public space transformation, urban green spaces, its threats and services and an investigation of a specific case study, this thesis identifies parking garages as potential spaces to compensate a lack of urban green and public environment. The study of possible integration of public and green services into the existing structures of parking garages is performed on the level of a city wide analysis, as well as in a particular context of a central district in Malmö. The study shows that the location of parking garages within network nodes of an increasingly mobile society and fragmented city structure could be strategic locations for additional uses. Furthermore an evaluation of parking garage usage has confirmed, that stand-alone, open-roof structures have been affected by vacancy, specifically in the upper floors due to decrease of demand for car parking in the central parts of Malmö. Finally this study concludes that parking garages are overlooked nodes with further potentials for adaptive reuse.

The rights of tenants to the spaces that they are possessors of but do not hold titles to is contested in practice in large scale redevelopment projects. This thesis takes a look at two specific instances of urban district redevelopment and renewal in Malmö, Sweden: the slum clearance of Lugnet in the 1960s and the attempts to densify Holma in the present day. Using the concepts of the power of law, property and dispossession the thesis asks “how have the rights of tenants been taken into consideration?” This thesis finds that there is a great discrepancy between legal and philosophical constructs of property and ownership – that have been articulated in law well before the modern age – and the “dispossessory tendencies” prevalent in urban planning. It also finds that the codifying of tenant rights in the communicative model of planning has little relation to tenants rights as possessors – users – of their everyday spaces. These rights are challenged by ideas of the public good and the large scale of redevelopment projects. / Hyresgästers rättigheter till de platser som de besitter men inte innehar lagfarten till har i praktiken åsidosatts vid storskalig exploatering av bebyggda områden. Denna uppsats tittar närmare på två specifika fall av sådan exploatering, som berör hela stadsdelar i Malmö. Det första fallet är slumsaneringen av Lugnet i centrala Malmö på 1960-talet, och det andra är pågående försök att förtäta Holma i de södra delarna av Malmö. Utifrån begreppen makt, egendom och besittningsrätt ställs frågan “hur har hyresgästers rättigheter beaktats i dessa situationer?” Uppsatsen finner att det finns en stor diskrepans mellan de juridiska och filosofiska sätten att tänka kring egendom och ägandeskap – så som de har uttryckts i lag långt innan den moderna tidsåldern – och de bortträngande tendenserna som är inneboende i stadsplanering. I uppsatsen framkommer det också att fastställandet av hyresgästers rättigheter i planeringens kommunikativa process har liten koppling till hyresgästers rättigheter som besittare – dvs. brukare – av sina vardagsplatser. Dessa rättigheter utmanas av idéer om det allmännas bästa och storskaligheten på nybyggnationen.