Can we empower citizens by making the inordinately complicated rules and processes surrounding such everyday things as housing and street vending visually more clear?

In case you haven’t noticed through her work with street vendors and our friends at the Center For Urban Pedagogy (here) or through her thoughtfully unique and simple tools for gather information about a neighborhood’s housing (here), Candy Chang has been doing amazing work. Recently, yesterday in fact, we found out that she has produced a pretty incredible series of housing rights flashcards for tenants that make the overly complex, clear and understandable (here). She has also founded the Civic Center (here), an organization that is dedicated to championing civic engagement through stories, services, products, and public installations.

Community Leader Trading Cards?

Please Disturb Doorknob Hangers?

Sidewalk Psychiatry?

Smart, witty, wonderful….yes.

Quite frankly the breadth of the questions they are asking is fantastic and you should definitely check it out their site (here).

Candy’s work is a fantastic example of a relatively simple solutions to incredibly challenging problems that we at Public Workshop can do nothing but stand up, heartily applaud and generally incessantly jump up and down with excitement.

Keep up the good work Candy, we can’t wait to see what you surprise us with next.