The Young Urban Futures Program (UFP) equips early-career urban professionals: students, recent graduates, and practitioners in their first years of practice, to turn well-founded ideas into implementable urban and territorial solutions.
Built on mentorship, applied learning, and leadership opportunities, UFP helps participants gain the confidence, networks, and evidence base to contribute meaningfully to policies, plans, and projects aligned with inclusive, resilient, and sustainable development. Multidisciplinary by design, UFP brings together planners, designers, engineers, ecologists, public-health specialists, lawyers, financiers, data analysts, and community organizers to work side by side on real briefs from partner cities and regions.
Cohorts progress through a structured pathway that blends skills training, peer exchange, and hands-on delivery. Short sprints and studios are anchored in concrete outputs: concept notes, decision memos, evaluation frameworks, or pilot prototypes reviewed by IUPF members with relevant expertise. To widen participation, activities are programmed across time zones with multilingual facilitation where feasible; bursaries are available for candidates with limited financial means. Professional integrity underpins everything: participants follow IUPF’s code of conduct, apply ethical data practices (including KYC/GDPR where applicable), and document sources and assumptions to ensure transparency and replicability.
International mentorship matching. Each participant is paired with one or more mentors from IUPF’s global network: academia, public agencies, private practice, and civil society, for targeted guidance on technical questions, career pathways, and project strategy. Clear agreements set goals, touchpoints, and deliverables to keep progress accountable.
Scholarships and travel grants for conference participation. Competitive support enables UFP Fellows to attend IUPF’s flagship and regional symposia, present work, and engage in city labs and track sessions, with post-event knowledge sharing (briefs, talks, or toolkits) that benefits the wider community.
UFP forums and competitions with worldwide visibility. Curated forums and design/policy challenges invite teams to test ideas under real constraints and receive rigorous peer feedback. Winning entries are showcased through IUPF channels and may be fast-tracked into pilots, publications, or technical-assistance opportunities.
Upon completion, alumni join an active community of practice with access to collaboration boards, micro-fellowships, and publication pathways within IUPF’s ecosystem. The result is a durable bridge from learning to doing: young urban professionals who can navigate complexity, communicate evidence clearly, and deliver outcomes with integrity ready to lead the next generation of urban and territorial transformation.