Cities Network Innovation Lab

In 2017, CSC collaborated with The Nature Conservancy’s Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team to design and facilitate an Innovation Lab for its Cities Network — a cohort of urban conservation leaders working across more than 20 cities in the United States and internationally.

The Cities Network was seeking to advance more just and community-centered approaches to urban conservation. While conservation initiatives often focus on environmental outcomes, this moment called for deeper integration of equity, cultural context, and community voice within strategy design.

CSC designed the Innovation Lab as a structured learning and co-creation process that brought together a diverse cross-section of staff to examine how power, culture, and institutional norms shape urban environmental practice.

The lab focused on:

• Strengthening collaboration with low-income communities and communities of color
• Exploring how conservation investments can generate mutual benefit for people and ecosystems
• Surfacing implicit assumptions shaping program design
• Aligning environmental strategy with social justice principles

Through facilitated dialogue, systems analysis, and collaborative design exercises, participants began to reframe conservation as relational stewardship — recognizing that durable environmental outcomes depend upon trust, shared decision-making, and community agency.

This engagement reflects CSC’s broader commitment to integrating equity, cultural wisdom, and structural innovation — supporting global institutions in advancing regenerative strategies that serve both people and planet.