The Green Hub at CoLab
The Green Hub at MIT is a collaborative project of
MIT’s CoLab, Oxfam Great Britain (GB), and the
Presencing Institute. The mission of Green Hub is to
work collaboratively with MIT schools, departments
and research centers, NGOs, governments, private
sector groups, and others to create resources that are
of value for the world at large. We work to promote a
focus on equity, social inclusion, and social innovation
in green transformations.
Our focus
More than 300 cities in the United States alone
have pledged to undergo “green transformations.”
There is growing public awareness that an
unprecedented opportunity for urban
transformation is underway. Yet, addressing the
interrelated issues of poverty and social isolation
is the critical missing element in many approaches
to “green.” Since dense cities are essential to
long-range ecological sustainability, greening
efforts must address the root causes of urban
poverty, white flight, and suburban sprawl. We call
this approach “deep green.” The Green Hub works to
advance and support comprehensive strategies that
incorporate poor and marginal groups and create
solutions to poverty and social isolation that will bring
about effective and equitable, deep green
transformation in cities.
Our work
The overall goals of the Green Hub are to:
 Promote a sharp focus on equity, social
inclusion, and social innovation within existing
responses to the coming wave of green
transformations.
 Develop on-the-ground projects that
demonstrate the utility of socially
transformative approaches to greening cities.
With the combined expertise of MIT’s CoLab, Oxfam
GB, and the Presencing Institute, the Green Hub
works through three avenues to achieve these goals.
Our three impact areas are:
 Global Prototypes (Oxfam GB)
Poor urban communities of
color must be included in
setting the agenda and reaping
the benefits of green urban
transformations.


Research and Innovation (MIT)
Social Technology (Presencing Institute)
How We Work: Global Prototypes with Oxfam GB
The Green Hub aims to support targeted cities across
the globe in their transition to a low-carbon future. We
see this work as an opportunity to restructure markets
to ensure that poor communities have an economic
and political stake in their future. The climate change
agenda is opening up huge opportunities for
redistributing power and wealth, and cities will be a
key locus for this change. While the potential is
significant, it could be lost without an immediate and
concerted effort to develop and spread models of how
poor and marginalized communities can capture the
advantages of these new markets.
Beginning in 2008, the Green Hub aims to work with
several cities in the United States, the United
Kingdom, and the Southern Hemisphere to frame
major initiatives on green transformation. In
partnership with Oxfam, the Green Hub will facilitate
these efforts by identifying and leveraging support
and resources for locations, organizations, and
individuals where there is a high potential for
innovative initiatives of significant scale that address
both climate change and economic and social
exclusion. The Green Hub aims to work with local
partners to develop a sound political analysis of how
change evolves in these locations, and to identify the
key actors who will be central to framing and leading
these initiatives. This initial scoping phase and
analysis will be followed by work in each location to
convene leaders and to work together toward defining
a number of initiatives.
How We Work: Research and Innovation at MIT
Within MIT, the Green Hub works to connect key
thinkers who are engaged in different aspects of
green urban transformations to foster a vibrant arena
for knowledge sharing, innovation, and on-the-ground
implementation. To that end, we facilitate the transfer
of interconnected knowledge in technology, business
and financial models, methods, social technologies,
and relationships for social inclusion and policy.
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working group
MIT DUSP Working Group
CoLab has convened a Working Group on
Environmental Justice. The Working Group
hosts monthly meetings in which MIT
Department of Urban Studies (DUSP)
professors discuss strategies to address the
intersections of social equality, racial justice,
and environmental sustainability. CoLab aims
to work with this group to convene key thinkers
and generate innovative strategies for urban
green transformations that incorporate shared
wealth formation for marginalized communities.
The Working Group plans to develop
comprehensive policy strategies to help US
cities implement innovative, socially inclusive,
deep green transformations.
Current participants include:
DUSP Professor Phil Thompson
DUSP Professor Anne Spirn
DUSP Professor Judy Layzer
DUSP Professor Chris Zegras
CoLab Program Director Amber Bradley
DUSP Graduate Student Amit Sarin
Research
CoLab is supporting MIT graduate student Amit
Sarin in researching green urban
transformations and the opportunities these
initiatives present for income generation in
marginalized communities.
MIT Course-based Projects
CoLab works with MIT professors to identify
community partners and develop client-based
courses in which MIT graduate students work
to create useful deliverables to communitybased organizations. Course-based projects
span the breadth of our work, and are often
directly related to green transformations.
To learn more about green-related projects as
a part of our GainShare work,
Tools and Resources
CoLab is currently compiling information on a variety of green-related resources,
with an emphasis on tools and resources relevant to social inclusion and deep
green transformations. Initially, this resource will provide a clearinghouse for
information on green-related resources, projects, people, and programs at MIT.
Eventually, this tool will grow to include information on green resources and
information across the globe.
[START HERE]
How We Work: Social Innovation with the
Presencing Institute
Systemic change in cities will require a different kind
of leadership: leadership that involves communities,
reaches across sectors, and builds deep levels of
trust, collaboration, and collective innovation. This
approach is key to deep green transformation as it
aims to fundamentally shift economic and social
relations through the work on environmental
regeneration and climate change.
Ecological challenges have become a critical
consideration for a broad range of leaders beyond the
environmental movement. As a result, today’s
movement to “greenify” cities calls for a fundamental
shift in the way that humans organize urban life.
Massive public expenditures to reach ecological goals
in urban areas create the potential for equitable
investment in poor communities and a fulfillment of
the New Deal’s unfinished promise of broad social
inclusion for poor and minority people. However, there
is little capacity for deeply addressing issues of equity
and inclusion within current environmental efforts.
Approaches that reach across sectors and build deep
levels of trust, collaboration, and collective innovation
are desperately needed to fully realize the
transformative opportunities that green initiatives
present.
In partnership with the Presencing Institute, the Green Hub
will:
 Convene high-leverage, cross-disciplinary
players to explore and address the lack of an
integrated base of knowledge and practice
encountered by governments, investors,
businesses, and communities.




Work with cross sector groups seeking to
develop high-impact, creative solutions to
socially inclusive, comprehensive green
transformation.
Facilitate processes of analysis and creative
development among a group of influential people and
organizations that lead to concrete initiatives.
Apply the Presencing Institute’s social
technologies, which allow people with highly
diverse views and conflicting interests to
engage in a focused way and generate new
thinking, productive conversation, and
practical breakthroughs.
Capture and share learning on both the
initiatives themselves, as well as the “social
technology” behind them—how different
interest groups come together to transform
their cities.
Our partners
Oxfam Great Britain
Oxfam Great Britain (GB) is a founding partner
of the Green Hub. Oxfam GB will engage in the
framing of the initiative, contribute policy and
program experience, and work with a number
of concrete initiatives on the ground. As a first
step, we aim to identify several locations where
Oxfam and MIT can begin working together to
support initiatives that meet the dual objectives
of addressing climate change and reducing
poverty and inequality. For more information on
Oxfam GB’s work, click here.
Presencing Institute
The Presencing Institute (PI) is a founding
partner of the Green Hub. The Green Hub is a
living embodiment of the Presencing Institute’s
commitment to create places and
infrastructures that convene strategic crosssector groups of frontline leaders to strengthen
their practices and networks, and thereby their
capacity for dealing with profound leadership
challenges.
PI will apply social technologies to the Green
Hub in an effort to bring together key players
from several sectors, including business,
government, labor, academia, and NGOs. For
more information on the Presencing Institute,
click here.
Emerging Leaders Innovate Across Systems (ELIAS)
Leaders in institutions around the world face
unprecedented economic, social, ecological, and
political challenges, both locally and globally. As
these challenges continue to multiply in number and
grow in complexity, leaders must develop innovative
tools to confront them. In doing so, they can create
opportunities to reinvent business models and
identities, transform social change protocols, and
work more collaboratively with governments.
CoLab is one of the hosts of ELIAS, or “Emerging
Leaders Innovate Across Sectors.” ELIAS is a global
cross-sector network of high-potential leaders and
their institutions working collectively to generate new
ideas, prototypes, and ventures. The purpose of
ELIAS is to contribute to the evolution of sustainable
global market systems that build human, social, and
natural capital, as well as financial and industrial
capital. Along with the Presencing Institute, and the
MIT Leadership Center, in collaboration with MIT
Sloan Executive Education, CoLab is launching the
second year of the program.
Concrete outcomes of participation in the ELIAS
leadership journey are:

Prototypes and prototype ideas for crosssector innovation that address the shared
challenges of creating value for the triple
bottom line—the economy, society, and the
environment—with the ultimate goal of
advancing global sustainability.

Membership in a steadily growing network of
leaders in the public, private, and civic sectors
that will enhance and accelerate the benefits
to individual participants.

A growing capacity among participating
organizations to develop strategic solutions to
sustainability challenges that span the three
sectors.

Pragmatic information and ideas for innovative
solutions to individual members’ challenges.

An enhanced capacity among leaders to
respond to the challenges of globalization and
sustainable development by pioneering
practical innovations.
The co-founders of ELIAS include BASF, BP, Nissan, Oxfam Great Britain, the
UN Global Compact, Unilever, the World Bank Institute, and the World Wildlife
Fund.