Candy Chang is an installation artist, urban planner, and designer whose mission is to make cities more comfortable for people. She is also a co-founder of Civic Center, a New Orleans based – civic design studio that strives to build helpful communities in New Orleans. Much of her current work is inspired from community insight of abandoned or lost buildings in the city. How could the spaces be improved for the people that live, work, and play here now?

What I have found interesting about Chang ‘s work is that she enables the community of New Orleans to voice their desires about urban planning in their city. How does she do it? That is a very good question. Many of her projects open up communication and create a public dialogue between designers and the community. Chang often poses what is seemingly research techniques as installation art itself in public spaces. Let’s look at some examples of her work.

How might a similar process for enabling community and providing a more comfortable city function in a city like Atlanta? It seems plausible that using a similar approach and technique as Chang but changing the city (to Atlanta) and changing the people (who live near the abandoned space) would in fact, vary the results of new design and urban planning drastically.