Continuing adult education requires continuous education of the educators themselves--a highly self-referential issue. This article focuses on educating a group of "urban educators" in the western part of the Netherlands who have been involved in broad urban educational programmes: school, parental education and participation, living environment, vocational preparation and the like. These contexts refer to plural and mutually connected ambitions: the necessity for more research in the broad field of urban renewal and its manifold domains; more focus on supporting the professionalisation of mid-career students engaged in Master of Public Administration (MPA) programmes, and in urban education (UrbEd) in particular, in order to build research, reflection and innovation into the course. Universities involved in professional education can make a major contribution to meeting this challenge when they arrange fruitful connections with a Research Centre like "Growing up in the City".