Over the last three decades, in France as in other European countries, urban projects have given increasing importance to negotiations between public and private players, and to iterative and incremental design processes. Among the tools implemented by architects and other professionals in France, the plan-guide has progressively challenged the master plan as uncertainty about the means and the ends of projects grew. To understand the rationale of the plan-guide, it is useful to look at the way it was first deployed as the main working tool of Île de Nantes urban renewal project in the early 2000s. That case study sheds light on how urban projects relying on plan-guides became instrumental within neoliberal agendas.