Local planning ensures the economical use of land and orderly settlement. Like national planning, it creates the conditions for the long-term preservation of living space, for high-quality and lively residential neighborhoods, and for ensuring a diversity of uses. Local planning also serves the spatial development of the municipality's territory by defining, for example, the possible uses of buildings in a way that is binding on the property owners, as well as by outlining and coordinating further development through the national guideline plan that instructs the authorities. The municipalities are obligated by law to carry out local planning. The office for structural engineering and spatial planning advises and supports the municipalities in this regard.