In this master’s project, we explored what a future, resilient development of Refshaleøen (Copenhagen) could look like. It is an area shaped by temporary uses and strong local identities, but also increasingly exposed to climate-related pressures and long-term redevelopment interests. The guiding question was how urban resilience could be meaningfully integrated into the planning process, and which tensions might appear when theory meets real-world governance, economics, and everyday life. 

To build a grounded overview, our work combined multiple perspectives and methods: we connected a literature-based framework with semi-structured expert interviews, informal street interviews, and a spatial/architectural site analysis, and then translated these insights into a tailored masterplan concept for the peninsula.  

We worked with a set of resilience principles, such as inclusivity, equity, transparency, diversity, creativity/innovation, integration, self-organisation, adaptability, forward-thinking, and interdependence, to evaluate what “resilience” could realistically mean for Refshaleøen as a unique urban landscape. 

Overall, the project highlighted how resilience planning has to balance technical and social dimensions at the same time. In conversations with different stakeholders, themes like adaptability, equity, self-organisation, and integration repeatedly came up—especially the importance of building on what already exists and protecting the creative, temporary structures that give the area its character.  At the same time, we identified typical conflicts that shape large-scale redevelopment: for example, the tension between profit-driven development models and social goals like affordability and anti-gentrification, and the challenge of meaningful participation when communities are partly short-term or unstable.