Buildings are cultural as well as physical artefacts, interpreted and used in ways that change over time and between various social groups. Properties for commercial and industrial uses are particularly susceptible to changes of function, as well as to changing economic and aesthetic evaluations. The built environment of older industrial districts in semi-central urban areas are often condemned as unsatisfactory, for example, although studies show that a broad diversity of premises in accessible locations are important for the development of small businesses. On the other hand, the design and management of buildings in peripheral housing estates, where an increase in the number of local, small businesses is desired for many reasons, tend to make them unattractive to entrepreneurs. In order to support the culture of entrepreneurship a better understanding is needed of the role of the built environment and the possibilities to reconcile different interests in urban planning. Therefore, a picture sorting study was carried out, exploring the conceptua-lization of the built environment among small business entrepreneurs and urban planners in the Swedish towns Trollhättan and Göteborg. This study showed significant differences between the two groups in their use of verbal constructs when characterizing the buildings, where primarily the use of industrial branch classifications discriminated between them. In contrast, consensus analysis of the sortings as such showed no significant differences, indicating analogous perception patterns and the possibility of a dialogue. Both groups saw the same similarities and differences between the buildings but described them according to their particular frames of reference. The approach tested in this study will be developed on the basis of communicative planning theory in an ongoing research project, studying renewal and job creation initiatives in problematic housing areas in three Swedish towns: Jönköping, Norrköping and Växjö.