Assignment of planning services for the development of an Integrated Urban Development Concept (ISEK) according to the Federal Guidelines ("Integrated Urban Development Concepts in Urban Development - A Working Aid for Municipalities") for the city of Ettlingen.

Urban development today is a joint task of politics, administration, citizens and business. Topics such as demographic change, climate change, changing economic conditions, (e-) mobility and digitization, and the creation of dwellings in conjunction with the need for internal development are among the central challenges and tasks of a city today and require a multidisciplinary approach to sustainable urban development approach.

In this context, an integrated urban development concept offers the opportunity to take a holistic view of the city and its challenges and tasks, to place individual measures in a larger context, to bundle information and to set goals for the administration and the municipal council for the next few years.

The autonomous and sometimes comprehensive concepts and plans that already exist for different departments of the city of Ettlingen are good and correct in themselves, but they are not yet or only partially able to cope with this "integrated" approach, as a systematic / conceptional linking of different subject areas is only conditionally so far is available.

In addition, the need to timed and prioritize projects and measures against the background of annual budgets shows that an overall vision and a target concept are helpful for the long-term structuring of these projects and measures.

In a first step (basic determination), all currently existing or already planned projects / concepts / statistics and individual measures should be bundled and assigned to the defined action fields in order to get an overview of what the city is already doing in which area or in which areas you still have to act.

In a second step (strategy development), objectives for the city of Ettlingen are to be developed based on the basic analysis, the existing structures safeguarded, identified deficiencies eliminated and future-oriented areas of action identified, which serve as the basis for the derivation of individual measures. The goals are to be discussed and decided by the local council.

Step 3 (Action Concept) is the "heart" of the ISEK. On the basis of the previously agreed goals, measures are to be defined and prioritized that serve the implementation of the goals. In addition, a structural concept with spatial development priorities is to be developed. The local council is to advise the identified and the individual measures audited by the specialized agencies and decide on them as an action plan. The implementation of the measures then takes place in the context of the normal course of business of the administration and committees.

Steps 1 and 2 are provided for the city as a whole, step 3 is spatially initially considered for the core city. Laterally, district concepts can optionally be implemented following the ISEK process in a separate procedure. The optional services are already being offered by the offices, but are subject to the decision of the local council.

Some key issues are now considered necessary by the administration, while others may arise from the current procedure and then need to be discussed and approved by the local council (optional services). These optional services can be commissioned during the process, the local council would then decide separately.

The following key topics of the ISEK process should already be examined in detail as "basic services":

- demographics,

- mobility concept,

- digitization,

- process-accompanying citizen participation with online tool optional as permanent institution.