Gia Biagi

Gia Biagi is Principal of Urbanism & Civic Impact at Studio Gang, where she leads the office’s urban design and planning work. This part of the practice unites revitalizing cities with emphasis on ecology, mobility, and community with renewed focus on how to reimagine public assets, infrastructure, and institutions to be more relevant, connected, and responsive to the people and places where they reside.

Biagi’s career, spanning both private practice and public service, has established her as a visionary leader in community-centered, equity-focused, and environmentally responsible urban planning and design. From 2019 to 2023, she served as Commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Transportation, where she delivered hundreds of innovative transportation projects citywide and created a nation-leading strategic plan focused on equitable, safe, and sustainable mobility and transformational neighborhood investments. Prior to that, she led planning and design at Chicago’s Park District and held various other private and public sector roles where her work focused on neighborhood revitalization through planning, programs, policies, and capital investments.

At Studio Gang she has led projects such as Civic Commons, which reimagines how public assets can foster inclusion and economic opportunity; Memphis Riverfront Concept, which proposes a vision for six miles of parks and city fabric along the Mississippi River; the Seaholm Waterfront Concept Study, reimagines a dormant infrastructural asset on Austin’s Lady Bird Lake as a celebrated part of civic life; Neighborhood Schools Reuse, which grounds ideas for the renewal of closed schools in the needs and aspirations of residents who live nearby; and New York Neighborhood Activation, which proposes a community-centered approach to designing for neighborhood wellness, safety, and stability.

Gia serves on the Shared-Use Mobility Center’s board of directors and was previously appointed Secretary of the National Association of City Transportation Officials and served the boards of the City Parks Alliance and NeighborSpace. She is also a member of Lambda Alpha International, an honorary society for the study of land economics. Gia earned her Master of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan.