Sustainable urban development at the district and city level
This ensures the participation of citizens as local experts and creates a suitable environment for communication between citizens, policymakers and district representatives based on the autonomous competencies of the districts. Citizens negotiate projects that may influence the sustainable development of the district with the district’s politicians. At the same time the process is linked to strategies and policies on the city level to broaden the impact of measures, to multiply them to other city areas and to allow a more effective co-ordination.

Intensive and broad participation of citizens and other relevant actors
Sustainable development needs to be a common project and political decisions based on participatory processes have a better chance of being long-lasting and accepted by the people. Hence the LA21 Plus aims at a broad participation of all relevant actors on the local level.

Long-term sustainable process
Sustainable development through participation, communication and inclusion of different social groups needs time. Therefore the goal is to establish the LA21 Plus as a long-term process.

New forms of cooperation
Citizens, politicians, representatives of the city administration, the acadamic field, the economical sector and institutions shall communicate and cooperate in new ways by trespassing traditional and organisational borders.

Gender mainstreaming and diversity
Every project, strategy and process has to be assassed on a gender- and diversity-sensible perspective to foster an equality of chances and to avoid structural discrimination.