The central idea of the project is the transference of guidance to South East Asia, already developed through European-funded research. In particular PROSPECTS and PLUME, are defining current best practice in land use and transport policy formulation to achieve sustainability.  SPARKLE proposes to use the outputs and processes from the European research as the basis for the transference of policy-making skills to central and local governments in South East Asia.Many European strategies themselves are likely to be inappropriate in the Asian context, and suitable policies for one Asian country are likely to be less suitable in another, so it is very important to emphasise that it is the objective of SPARKLE to transform a logical process of decision-making to Asia, not to transfer policies.

Within this broad objective set out for the project, a number of specific objective for achieving the ultimate goal are as follows:

• Provide the decision makers and planners in South East Asian partner countries with an understanding of the definition, objectives, requirements, and importance   of a sustainable urban landuse and transport system;
• Encourage and stimulate local authorities and national government to take an initiative in developing sustainable urban land use and transport policies;
• Disseminate the technical knowledge based on our European funded research projects (PROSPECTS and PLUME) on the relationship between sustainability, transport system, and land use system to other countries, taking account of the different circumstances of the South East Asian partners;
• Enable local planners and government officials to identify problems in the local and regional urban land use and transport system, formulate objectives, indicators, and targets for a land use and transport policy, and to develop a policy solution to the problem which can achieve the set targets and objectives using a scientific approach (Strategic Planning Model), and implement, evaluate and develop the devised policy;
• Create a knowledge-intensive network between European partners and government and academic partners in South East Asia in order to discuss and exchange, now and in the future, the knowledge and experience in sustainable urban land use and transport planning.