At the beginning of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning process, it is necessary to analyse the available capacities and resources in order to set up effective working structures. To achieve a truly integrated planning process, the core team responsible for SUMP development should be well connected to all relevant areas of the administration. Dedicated activities should be conducted from the start to ensure political ownership and stakeholder and citizen engagement should be planned early on. The aim of the first step is to achieve both effective working structures and wide support for the process.

The activities of this and the next step are closely linked and sometimes run in parallel. For example, the geographic scope needs to be defined early on so that it is taken into account when setting up the working and participation structures.