Biography

Michael W. Mehaffy, Ph.D., is a researcher, educator, author and practitioner with expertise in urban planning, architecture and design, computer science and philosophy, with a focus on climate change and urbanism as well as complexity and network science. 

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• Ph.D. in architecture at top-ranked Delft University of Technology; doctoral research on urban form and climate, with development of scenario-modeling software using pattern languages;

• Masters study in philosophy, business, public affairs and architecture at U.C. Berkeley and U.T. Austin;

• Over three decades of experience in design, planning, development, construction, public policy, and strategic consulting;

• Many years of teaching and research, with appointments in architecture, planning and philosophy  at ten universities in eight countries, including ASU, University of Oregon and University of Notre Dame;

• Author of six books, and contributing author of over twenty books, as well as many research papers in peer-reviewed journals (Google Scholar h-index of 23, i10 index of 40, and 2,587 citations);

• Served as the first Director of Education for King Charles' foundation, then known as The Prince's Foundation, where his programme served as the basis for a new Masters and Ph.D. programme in Sustainable Urbanism at the University of Oxford; 

• Former Project Manager and co-designer for the Master Developer of Orenco Station, widely recognized as one of the first large-scale U.S. projects to successfully combine walkable mixed-use design with transit access, setting a national precedent for transit-oriented development;

• Former long-time collaborator of Christopher Alexander, developer of pattern languages and other related innovations in architecture and software;

• Widely recognized for his published research and professional articles on the works of Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, urban morphology, urban self-organization, architecture, computer science, and philosophy;

• Fellow of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the New Urban Guild, and Member of the INTBAU College of Traditional Practitioners;

• Executive Director of Sustasis Foundation, a small Oregon-based urban think tank (https://www.sustasis.org/);

• Executive Director of the Lennard Institute and International Making Cities Livable, an international conference on urban quality of life founded in 1985;

• President of Structura Naturalis Inc., his urban consultancy incorporated in 1993. 

Michael Mehaffy is noted for his theoretical contributions as well as his years of practice and teaching. In the book Design for a Living Planet (co-authored with Nikos A. Salingaros), he introduced "Place Network Theory," an urban spatial network theory, and in the book Notes on an Incomplete Architecture, he introduced "symmetric structuralism," described as a form of "neo-structuralism" to inform architecture and urbanism, and to resolve key problems in philosophy and linguistics. He has also developed contributions toward a "polycapital culturalism", dealing with problems of externality valuation and feedback in sustainable development. He is also active in developing new pattern language tools for consulting and community design, including the book A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes.

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For a full CV, please click here.