What can our cities learn from a temporary festival city?

A Community Takes Shape

By the time festivalgoers move into Dream City, the city is already full of connections. Not because everyone knows each other beforehand, but because the Dreamers – the city’s residents – have already spent the spring building it side by side.

Ten weekends before Roskilde Festival opens, the first Dreamers arrive in Dream City. They build towers, communal spaces, and the camps where festivalgoers will later stay. But they also share dinners, watch movies on a big screen, and trade everything from building materials to shot glasses.

When camping manager Berit Beck Frederiksen first came to Dream City as a team leader four years ago, she was particularly struck by the culture of the place.

»I was incredibly surprised by the sense of community and by how engaged everyone was – and I was blown away by the dedication of both the volunteer team and the Dreamers,« she says.

That dedication is easy to spot as you make your way down the main street. At the heart of the city, a newly built lounge area hums with activity. Made from reclaimed materials, it serves as a communal gathering place for Dream City’s core volunteers.

Under the blazing sun, a handful of festivalgoers in grubby flip-flops sit smoking cigarettes. Every few minutes, laughter erupts as passersby poke their heads in, say hello, and settle in for a moment – long enough for a drag and a joke – before continuing down the city’s main thoroughfare.

According to Mika Christoffersen, Head of Participation and Diversity at Roskilde Festival, good neighborly relations and a sense of belonging are areas where conventional urban planning beyond the festival grounds often falls short.

»I’d love to know more people in my own city. What if we did what people sometimes do in Danish allotment garden communities – threw a block party, or lit a bonfire and watched Shrek together outside on a summer evening?« says Mika Christoffersen

And if anything can bring people together, perhaps it’s precisely these simple, everyday forms of community. A bonfire. A screen. Shrek.

The Good City

»A good city should feel like one big hug.«

That’s how renowned urban design expert Jan Gehl describes the ideal city for people – a city that invites us to linger, meet others, and take a break on the spur of the moment. And Dream City has cracked that code.

Amid homemade structures, music, and people moving from camp to camp, a city emerges where you don’t simply pass through – you stick around.

Deputy mayor – or site coordinator – Joachim Alexander Olsson says some visitors never even make it to the concert areas. For them, the entire festival takes place in Dream City.

According to Lars Autrup, director of the Danish Association of Architects, the fact that people stick around isn’t just about the festival atmosphere. When the people who use a place have also helped build and shape it, they develop a different kind of connection to it.

»It creates a sense of ownership – a spiritual and emotional kind of ownership. You don’t have to own the place, but you develop a connection to it. You value it much more and take better care of it. And when people come to visit, they can tell that this is a place you care about,« he says.

At the same time, he points to a growing disconnect in the development of our permanent cities. A real estate developer can buy a site, build on it, and sell it without ever having to live in or care for the place that has been created. That kind of distance, he argues, is »poison for cities.«

And it shows up in even the most tangible design choices:

»There’s a world of difference between a balcony that looks inviting in a sales brochure and one that’s actually pleasant to sit on,« he says.

A sense of shared ownership, then, isn’t simply about having a say in the building process. It’s also about narrowing the distance between the people who build a place and those who will live with the result – creating greater responsibility for its quality as well as a lasting connection to the place.

The Right to Stay

In Dream City, shared ownership is more than just an idea. Across the different camps, people are free to borrow and use one another’s buildings.

»One thing other cities could really learn from Dream City is its communal spaces – and the idea that buildings can be shared. Even if someone else built them, you’re still welcome to come inside and use them. There’s no attitude of: This is mine – everyone else stay out,« says Mika Christoffersen.

When ownership is shared in this way, the line between private and communal space begins to blur. The buildings still have clear creators and people who take responsibility for them, but at the same time, they become part of the city’s shared life.

A good city, then, is also about who actually gets to be part of it. It’s not only a question of who is allowed in, but who is able to stay. Because if spending time somewhere requires you to buy something, the city isn’t truly equally accessible to everyone.

»Third spaces are something the festival as a whole – and Dream City in particular – does really well. In other words, shared places where you can spend time without having to buy anything. You don’t have to buy a coffee at a café to earn the right to be there – you can simply be,« says Mika Christoffersen.

That offers an important lesson for our permanent cities: A sense of belonging doesn’t have to depend on boundaries. It can also grow out of spaces we share.

Experimental Freedom

At the end of the main thoroughfare, the iconic orange Dream City installation rises from a hill – a bit like the festival’s own Hollywood sign. A handful of young people have climbed onto the letters D, E, and M, while a woman rests against the curve of the C.

The sign was designed to be seen, but it also serves as a bench, meeting place, and climbing structure – as well as a canvas for graffiti art. Like so much else in Dream City, it takes on new functions once festivalgoers make it their own.

According to Lars Autrup, this freedom to experiment, adapt, and use the city in new ways is one of Dream City’s greatest architectural strengths. While permanent cities evolve slowly and can be both expensive and difficult to change, ideas here can be tested at a much faster pace.

”Where it gets really interesting is when you use it as a laboratory for the permanent city. You can adjust and test things much faster than the profession normally allows – and with far less serious consequences,” says Lars Autrup.

Dream City makes it possible to test ideas at full scale and see what happens when people become directly involved. It isn’t just physical structures that are being tested, but different ideas about how a good city takes shape.

A similar approach can be found in Musicon, Roskilde’s creative district, which has been allowed to develop more organically rather than following a single predetermined plan. Among other initiatives, Roskilde Municipality hopes to build self-build homes there, allowing residents to take on the role of developers themselves.

The lesson, then, may lie less in the individual structures than in the process itself: giving urban development more room for intermediate stages, where solutions can be tested, adjusted, or abandoned before they become permanent.

But there is another lesson here, too: who gets to shape the city. In permanent cities, residents rarely get to pick up a hammer and start building themselves. But they can be brought into the process earlier, given meaningful influence, and invited to help shape the places they will eventually use.

Because a city only truly comes to life when people use it, care for it, and make it their own. Dream City is a vivid example of that.

The festival city exists for just one week a year. Yet it reminds us that a good city is never truly finished. It takes shape when people are given the space to shape it.

And an occasional half-dry birthday cake doesn’t hurt, either.