Determine the planning framework
Phase 1 · Preparation and analysis Determine the planning framework Step 2 of 12
With the working structures from Step 1 in place, Step 2 draws the boundary around the plan itself. Before any data is gathered it answers four practical questions. Which area does the plan cover? How does it connect to the strategies and legal duties already in force? What timeline and work plan will carry it? And what capacity does the team realistically have? In the urban outskirts the first question is the hardest, because the periphery rarely comes with tidy edges.
The four moves of this step
The standard SUMP framework assumes one city authority planning for a single built-up area. A 15-minute-neighbourhood plan for the outskirts inherits the same four moves, but each one has to be rethought for a place that is lower in density, more car-dependent, and often split across several authorities.
Define the area you are planning for
SUMP 2.0 asks planners to work with a functional area, the real travel-to-work and travel-to-service area, rather than a purely administrative boundary. DREAMS narrows the unit of analysis further. Following Deliverable 2.1, the relevant scale for a 15-minute-neighbourhood plan is the neighbourhood, and the fair way to compare very different settlements is residential density, measured as residents per square kilometre of urbanised land. Choosing the neighbourhood and a clear density measure lets you place your area on a typology and adapt the 15-minute principles to it, rather than importing a city-centre template.
Deliverable 2.1 revisited the 15-minute city concept for urban peripheries and set out a working definition. Urban outskirts are the medium-density areas in the near context of a city, where car dependency is high and the functional link to the city, above all the daily commute, is strong. The same deliverable describes peripheral areas along six dimensions: density, diversity, design, governance, business models and the human perspective. Naming what kind of periphery you are planning for, whether a post-war housing estate, a low-density suburb or a former village absorbed by a growing city, shapes every later choice about targets and measures.
DREAMS also shows that the people who live in these areas are not interchangeable. Across the six living labs the project planned around distinct focus groups whose needs frame the question differently: older adults and residents with a migration background in Geretsried near Munich, young adults along the T12 corridor in Évry-Courcouronnes near Paris, low-income residents in Overvecht in Utrecht, parents in Neder-Over-Heembeek in Brussels, and working-age adults in Rákosmente in Budapest. Deciding early whose proximity you are planning for is part of setting the framework.
The labs also show what bounding an outskirt looks like in practice. When the project surveyed residents, several teams used postcode filters to keep the focus on the periphery and to exclude the central districts, widening the recruitment area only where low response rates forced it. The lesson for Step 2 is the same one. A functional outskirt boundary is a deliberate choice, and it should be written down.
Connect to existing plans and duties
A SUMP is never written on a blank page. SUMP 2.0 calls for linking the plan to other planning processes, so that mobility, land use, housing, environment and economic development pull in the same direction. In the outskirts this matters even more, because the levers are shared. Responsibility for land use, roads, public transport and social services is usually split between a core city, one or more suburban municipalities and a regional or transport tier. None of them can deliver a 15-minute neighbourhood alone.
DREAMS mapped this terrain directly. Deliverable 2.2 reviews the existing planning, governance and business-model frameworks across the study regions, showing how different cities embed 15-minute goals in their own planning hierarchies and where the gaps sit. Starting from that map of who holds which lever is the practical way to align your plan with what already exists.
One legal duty is worth checking early. Under the revised TEN-T Regulation, cities designated as urban nodes are required to adopt a SUMP by 2027. For many peripheral municipalities that is both an obligation and an opening to put proximity on the agenda.
Agree a timeline and work plan
With the area and the connections clear, the plan needs a shape in time. SUMP 2.0 recommends agreeing a realistic timeline and work plan before the analysis begins, so that ambition is matched to capacity from the start. A workable sequence looks like this.
The DREAMS living lab in Vienna, in the outer district of Liesing, set out exactly this kind of phased plan. A set-up phase ran through spring 2025, a realisation phase built a flexible mobility hub from mid-2025, and an evaluation phase runs to the end of 2026. A first workshop was used to settle the framework conditions of who, where and what before the hands-on work began. Deliverable 5.1 documents the timetable and the local partnership behind it.
To locate your own area, compare it with the six DREAMS living labs. Each is a different kind of European outskirt, from a low-density fringe in Vienna to a post-war estate in Utrecht and a suburban district in Budapest. Reading the lab closest to your context is a fast way to see which challenges and interventions are likely to matter for your plan. Start at the living labs overview.
Before you fix the framework, it helps to see how your current planning measures up. The free SUMP self-assessment tool scores your planning against the principles of a good SUMP and returns tailored advice. For an orientation written for small and medium-sized cities, see Module 1: SUMP basic principles from the Baltic Sea Region Competence Centre on SUMP. A fuller list of guidance, tools and related projects is on the related initiatives and resources page.