Rethinking town centers in Denmark through a people-first approach

Understanding everyday life beyond the town center to inform better decisions

Across Denmark, smaller towns face difficult decisions about the future of their town centres. Changing retail patterns and shifting everyday needs raise questions about which functions to retain, where to invest, and how to create vibrant and relevant town centres.

But understanding the role of a town centre requires looking beyond the people who live there. Town centres also serve residents of surrounding villages and rural areas, whose everyday lives extend across multiple places.

“Between Town and Countryside” was a research collaboration across seven Danish municipalities, funded by Realdania and KFI and led by the Danish National Council for Rural Affairs and Dagrofa, together with the University of Southern Denmark, Aalborg University and Gehl.

Gehl brought a people-first perspective to the project, combining survey responses from nearly 6,000 residents with on-the-ground studies of six town centres. The research explored where people go in their everyday lives, what brings them into town centres, what they value and miss, and how they experience these places.

The findings revealed that town centres are not necessarily at the centre of everyday life for people living in the surrounding hinterland. Gehl translated these insights into a cross-cutting analysis and town-specific recommendations, providing municipalities with a richer evidence base for decisions about what to retain, where to invest, and how their town centres can better serve the wider communities that rely on them.