The HUD Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) employs a comprehensive approach to community transformation by helping stakeholders revitalize distressed public or assisted housing developments while investing in neighborhood and people projects that improve the quality of life for residents. Successful urban design and preservation efforts are vital to the success of a CNI Plan in order to help a disinvested community reach its full potential. This session will explore how residents are empowered to help create and utilize asset-based urban design and preservation techniques at both the neighborhood and site scales through hands-on visioning and youth engagement, the creation of early action projects and the identification of catalyst priority projects. The speaker will share examples from a series of seven Choice Neighborhoods Plans he has helped to lead and facilitate in diverse communities throughout the nation. Topics will include utilizing meaningful engagement and capacity building to achieve successful outcomes, balancing preservation and new development on historically recognized public housing properties, identifying vacant buildings and sites that can hold and accommodate new people programs, designing mixed-income developments that enhance community and connections with the surrounding neighborhood and improving perception through public improvements, branding and art.