The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is a center for planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).
CoLab supports the development and use of knowledge from excluded communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth.
Watch the full panel discussion to see the whole conversation. In the summer of 2009, MIT CoLab deployed student staff to organizations in North Carolina, Mississippi, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Los Angeles, among others, to collaborate with communities interested ...
At the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC, homeless neighbors and community members alike contribute to tending a large and growing garden. They share the food the grow with neighbors and the homeless hospitality house next door, and will begin selling produce ...
Story #5 for the Who's On Broad digital story series.
How do you get a biodiesel processor in your community or on your campus?
Two friends, one a lifetime Bed-Stuy Brooklyn resident, and the other a Harlem native, talk about their love of New York Brownstones.
Residents in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn discuss their frustrations with food choice and grocery shopping. Even as the neighborhood changes and new stores come in, sometimes the prodicts are so expensive that local people can't access them.
Residents of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn are being displaced as gentrification forces them out. In the face of a changing neighborhood, these Brooklyn voices describe their ideal community.
In the spring semester of 2008, a mixed class of grad and undergrad students, including architects, urban planners, and engineers, worked in Tambo de Mora, a town on Peru's southern coast that was ruined by a earthquake a year before our visit. This is the story of the class.
Elizabeth is a 12-year-old girl from Tambo de Mora, Peru. in 2007, her town was destroyed by an earthquake. Hear her words, and see the pictures she has taken of her town in this short audio slideshow.
From "A Day in Biddeford, Maine" by the Community Innovators Lab at MIT
Six students - working with MIT faculty, CoLab staff, and a range of community partners - have collaborated on their thesis research throughout the year by sharing their research discoveries, crafting intellectual connections across their studies, trouble-shooting problems, and publicly ...
six master in city planning CoLaborative thesis writers publicly presented their research on Regenerating Local Economies. Presentations were on Wednesday through Friday, April 21-23. Credits CoLaborative Thesis In order of appearance Gayle Christiansen, Housing, Community and Economic ...
On May 11th, a group of community leaders from across the nation gathered in New York to discuss what they are doing locally to improve their communities with the stimulus money. MIT graduate student researchers Uyen Le and Sarah Nusser presented an extensive flow diagram and spreadsheet ...
Full story of international Street Chair day at: http://colabradio.mit.edu/category/street-chairs/ Installation above by John Cropper.
Here is one clip of footage from Port Au Prince two months after the earthquake. A small team of MIT alumni, professors, fellows, students, and staff went to Haiti in March 2010 to help formulate a housing reconstruction plan. Here is one clip from our visit.
