As climate change continues to pose unprecedented challenges, it is essential for local governments to have tools that not only align with national and EU-level policies but also address the specific needs of their territories. Despite their ambitious climate neutrality goals, many local and regional authorities face persistent challenges in translating these targets into concrete actions.

The IN-PLAN Practice is designed to do just that: it equips municipalities, regions, and other public authorities with a comprehensive approach that bridges the gap between policy and action. The Practice is designed to help local governments overcome key challenges by providing a more integrated and collaborative approach to planning. It facilitates the merging of various sectoral plans—such as climate adaptation, renewable energy, and sustainable mobility—into a unified spatial planning framework. By bridging the often fragmented, siloed planning processes, IN-PLAN enables a more holistic strategy that ensures all sectors are working together toward common sustainability goals.  

In recent years, many local and regional authorities have set ambitious climate neutrality targets and are actively implementing the necessary transformations in energy and mobility to achieve these goals. Despite operating within various overarching framework conditions, these authorities play a crucial role in translating national and European climate targets into practical actions. They have control over spatial developments within their jurisdictions and often hold the legal mandate to develop and enforce spatial development plans. These plans outline future settlement and economic development while setting restrictions on land use. Given the strong correlation between spatial structures, energy demand and supply, and mobility patterns, spatial planning serves as a valuable tool for municipalities to drive crucial initiatives for addressing climate change and achieving net-zero targets.

The IN-PLAN Practice, developed under the framework of the LIFE IN-PLAN project, aims to provide municipalities, regions, and other public authorities with a comprehensive guidebook for integrating climate adaptation, mobility, and energy planning into spatial planning processes. It fosters institutionalised collaboration across different departments and stakeholders at all levels. As such, the practice is meant to:

• give guidance on how to utilise and integrate spatial plans to streamline sectoral planning instruments, documents, and plans

• outline key aspects and milestones to consider during the spatial planning process

• recommend practical tools, software, and methods for conducting basic research, communication, and other essential planning tasks

• identify which stakeholders should be involved both organisationally and content-wise

• provide useful good practice examples