In the early 2000s, The Danish Arts Foundation strengthened a burgeoning inter-disciplinary tendency in urban planning when it decided to fund strategic design pro-jects for post-industrial Danish harbour cities. The present study delves into the process that involved a specially composed team of seven members (architects, artists, and a scholar of cultural theory [the author of the present article]), as well as administrative and political institutions in Sønderborg, a historic city of 30,000 inhabitants in Sou-thern Jutland, not far from Germany.

Referring to French philosopher Michel de Certeau’s critical demonstration of a gap separating the urban planner from the very life of the city to which the plan or design is destined, the Arts Foundation team systematically attempted to negotiate its own points of view, and those of everyday citizens and social life in Sønderborg. Notably, the design team explored the itineraries of everyday life as a basis for new urban spaces, architectural structures, and pedestrian infrastructures. The latter should reuse industrial urban elements of the early 20th century – elements that could easily be ap-propriated by the scale and practices of contemporary urban life.

”Encountering the City’s Harbour”: these words summarize the conception under-lying the urban design and development strategy proposed by the Arts Foundation team. A model comprising four levels – [1] studies from afar; [2] in situ explorations of the urban fabric; [3] elaboration of a key concept; [4] dialogues with urban users – systematizes the collaborative efforts made from 2002 to 2005 and provides a practical answer to the structural challenge outlined by Certeau.