Urban Lab – City for the Young — Poland's Youth Civic-Participation Pilot

Poland's Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy and the Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IRMiR) launched the "Urban Lab – City for the Young" pilot for 2024–2029, testing a non-hierarchical civic-space model aimed at residents aged 13–35 in eight cities: Bydgoszcz, Toruń, Kielce, Lublin, Zielona Góra, Szczecin, Rzeszów and Opole.

The pilot is funded at PLN 6,582,045.10, financed 79.71% by the European Regional Development Fund under the 2021–2027 Technical Assistance for Effective Policy programme and 20.29% from Poland's state budget; participating cities such as Bydgoszcz report roughly PLN 4 million in EU funding over four years, with each local lab holding about PLN 300,000 for youth-proposed mini-grants.

Each Urban Lab runs city-specific mixes of Urban Cafés, prototyping schools, repair initiatives, STEAM activities, leadership academies and a flexible "Factor X" innovation fund. IRMiR plans to evaluate each city's real-world effectiveness and publish free lessons for other Polish municipalities to replicate — but as of mid-2026 the pilot remains in its early implementation phase, with no independently verified outcome results yet published.

Read the full analysis: https://irmir.pl/news/rusza-nabor-do-pilotazowego-projektu-urban-lab-miasto-dla-mlodych/