The built landscape and urban structures of Danish cities have gone through significant changes, however, it can be presumed that the democratic origin of local planning is challenged in its contemporary context. There is growing evidence that the local plan has a tendency of primarily focusing on legal and technical matters and too narrow detailing of urban environments. This inherits several planning issues. Firstly, the built environment is fluid and living, in that sense, we must work with locally-specific urban qualities as something, which is variable and transforming. Secondly, only planners and perceptive citizens can navigate and fully understand the local plan. Thirdly, planners tend to use informal and creative methods to communicate ideas and visions during the planning process, however, much of this material is excluded in the final local plan.
Against this situation, this master thesis sets out to experiment and challenge the local plan's current process and format to set a forward direction for future local planning. To do so, the project firstly frames an analytical exploration that maps the conflicts and controversies in present local planning, to later construct a research question and diagnosis that lead to two qualified scenarios. The two scenarios consist of potential solutions that aim to re-democratize today’s local planning. Leading to the epistemology, that a re-democratization of local planning can fertilize ‘urban quality’ in the built environment.