Since 2008, the Urban Design program (UD) at HCU HafenCity Universität Hamburg has been working on various modes of urban research. As the first comprehensive overview of UD’s work, the book “Tom Paints the Fence – Re-negotiating Urban Design” will be published by Spector Books in winter 2019/20. The exemplary framework of the book is provided by the University of Neighbourhoods, which was a place for teaching, research and practice in Hamburg Wilhelmsburg from 2008 to the beginning of 2014. The editors and their manifold partners use the book to lay open their narrative of the city: it is not something given, but is produced. And this narrative is not only associated with special forms of knowledge that take the collectively produced city seriously as an act of understanding. It also deals with a political understanding of the city that is always based on negotiation.