The role of the imagined user in planning and design narratives is explored. It is argued that the imagined user is critical to the plausibility of design and planning narratives by bringing resonance and meaningfulness to them. As such, the imagined user is an important rhetorical tool. This article draws on the author’s experience of the regeneration of Hulme, Manchester, in the United Kingdom, in the late 1990s and shows how tenants were constructed as imagined users by planners and designers in ways that made sense of, and supported, specific planning and design choices.