In a rapidly urbanizing world, cities are the first line of defense against local and global climate change. The ultimate aim of such actions should be to enhance urban quality of life in a sustainable and equitable manner. In EU, a key challenge is to retrofit cities to adapt to changing climate in the short term while contributing to the mitigation of climate change in a sustainable manner. The issues needed to be addressed are far beyond the capacity of the fragmented knowledge of today’s urban development professionals. RESCUE addresses this need by feeding three thematic strands (Climate Change Science/Planning/Management) into a set of core modules for a Europe-based international MSc programme. A Reference Group; researchers in Associate Partner countries together with urban decision makers will act as sounding board to gauge the nature and breadth of the industry needs in the area. Findings will be widely disseminated via cutting edge media and Associates. Student mobility is built-in within the learning streams for specialisation, through which the learning outcomes will attract a wide scope of relevant professions. This model helps us reinforce and deepen each participant’s expertise and knowledge with an overall objective of developing the ability of mutual understanding and cooperation. We will pilot our approach on block-release mode for urban professionals and evaluate it independently to learn lessons for the proposed MSc programme to show how our approach will address a real and pressing gap in current professional development in managing urban growth to address local and global climate change. Our extensive collective experience in communicative planning (LUAS), urban climate change science (UdS), widening access to higher education and sustainability management and assessment (GCU), as well as expertise in a wide range of teaching delivery enable us to develop a truly accessible, technically sound and practical higher learning stream.