Due to the financial crisis of most of the european countries and the following austerity measures many big scale development projects in cities have come to a halt. In reaction, the past years have seen an increasing number of initiatives, projects and organizations, that tackle urban problems and challenges in a bottom-up manner. These actions are making use of the city’s diversity, they promote sustainable smart cities, they create new forms of entrepreneurship, they create new public spaces. They stand for a new idea of active citizenship. These activities have been the breeding ground for a new market of small scale businesses in the urban field, that will grow and become more important in the future of cities in Europe.The educational system for young people willing to work in the ‚urban arena‘ has not yet adapted to the current developments. Architects, Urban Planners, Designers, Urban Sociologists, Human Geographers, but also young people coming from the crafts, are not prepared for engaging in the city, due to a lack of practical knowledge, which would allow them to directly target issues themselves in initiatives, working-groups, small self-initiated businesses, etc.. Instead, they learn how to plan a city top-down, to analyze and target issues from the office-desk, and not from the field, and to plan housing and public spaces without involvement of stakeholders (such as potential users, local administrations, local protagonists). As a result of the disparity between education and the potential of becoming a self-employed protagonist in the city created a youth unemployment in the abovementioned sectors adding to the overall figures of youth unemployment in Europe.The importance of the city for Europe’s future and the gap between education and the employment opportunities in the urban field are the reasons behind establishing a network of partners from 6 european cities, that offers learning opportunities for youth to become active, self-employed protagonists in the ‘urban arena’.The CityToolBox Network (CTB) aspires to close the gap and to allow future professionals in the urban field to gather practical knowledge in the field of citizen-driven activities to connect them among each other, to broaden their awareness for challenges in the city, and most of all to empower them to become agents of change themselves. In the frame of strategic partnerships we will develop an educational program for youth based on an OER - learning platform called CityToolBox. The platform supports ICT-based teaching and training and will present ‘Best Practices’ in the field of self-initiated urban change. The practises are coming from each partner organisation and are ongoing projects, that have already been implemented and tested in each partner’s local context. The ‘best practices’ are going to be documented, described and abstracted to the quality of a manual: so the local method of changing an urban situation becomes a ‘tool’ that can potentially be applied by others in other contexts. These ‘tools’ are documented in various forms appropriate to attract and motivate youths to apply and test them in their own local urban environment. CTB changes the way youth conceive their role in the ‘urban arena’. It will take them out of the ‘waiting queue’ for an uncertain labor market in the urban field, and will offer them tools to become pro-active citizens.