Tennøy and Hagen shift attention from planning rules to the conduct of institutions that interpret and apply them. Based on interviews with eleven employees of property development firms involved in city-centre projects in small and medium-sized Norwegian cities, the paper analyses how public authorities influence feasibility through goals, knowledge and power. Its defining insight is that project delivery is not determined by regulation alone: authorities actively shape outcomes through agenda-setting, conflict resolution, continuity of objectives and their understanding of development economics. The paper therefore treats profitability not as an external market condition but as a planning variable that public bodies must comprehend if desired urban transformation is to occur. Methodologically, the deliberate use of the developer perspective gives analytical clarity to an underexamined actor position while openly acknowledging its limits. The wider bridge is to implementation theory and negotiated governance, where the capacity to produce compact, sustainable urban development depends on how institutions mediate conflict rather than merely on the objectives encoded in plans.
URBANISM MEETS ART