The article examines how emotions influence the co-construction of an urban renewal project. The case study is located in Saint-Denis, Reunion Island’s main city, in a French overseas department in the southwest Indian Ocean. This work aims to analyse the links between an urban project, the professional stakeholders involved and the territory in which it is developed. The outcomes of the research describe how emotions linked to memory and the quest for legitimacy hamper the implementation of the co-construction process within the conseil citoyen (citizens’ group). Three interviews with women involved at different levels in the urban project have been fully analysed to rebuild a multiview comprehension of this three-year process, at the end of which the conseil citoyen had all but ceased to function. Our results show that emotions linked to historical dynamics are difficult to share and that this limitation might be the main issue of the conseil citoyen under study. The research also highlighted the difficulty of stakeholders to express their emotions about their set goals and what they finally managed to achieve with the inhabitants. The inability to communicate emotions between opposing stakeholders of the urban project impact the democratic process. Citizen participation processes should be based on a solid common ground on which to build discussions and allow participants to move from confrontation to co-construction.