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Michael West Mehaffy (born October 24, 1955, in
Beaumont, Texas Beaumont is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, Jefferson County, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area, located in Southeast Texas on the Neches River about east of Houston (city ...
) is an urbanist, architectural theorist, urban philosopher, researcher, educator, and executive director of Sustasis Foundation, based in Portland, Oregon, USA. Mehaffy has held teaching and/or research appointments in architecture, urban planning and philosophy at eight graduate institutions in seven countries. He is currently Faculty Associate at
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...
. He is the former Director of Education of
The Prince's Foundation The King's Foundation (formerly the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture until 2001, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment until 2012, the Prince's Foundation for Building Community until 2018, and the Prince's Foundation until 2 ...
for the Built Environment in
London, UK London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Tha ...
, and advisor to the former Prince of Wales (now King
Charles III Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and ...
).


Books

Mehaffy is the author of Cities Alive: Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander and the Roots of the New Urban Renaissance. The book explores the ideas behind the United Nations’ “New Urban Agenda” to which Mehaffy contributed as a consultant to UN-Habitat. He is also coauthor, with Nikos Salingaros, of the 2014 book ''Design for a Living Planet'', a critique of conventional architectural practice and, as they argue, its wider context of a failing technology. He is also the lead author of A New Pattern Language: Places, Networks, Processes, a followup to the 1977 book A Pattern Language: Towns Buildings, Construction, by Christopher Alexander and associates. The new book is described as “a new collection of 80 patterns (that) emerged in part from a five-year collaboration with UN-Habitat to address new urban challenges, including rapid urbanization, slum upgrading, sustainable urbanism, (and) emerging technologies...” Mehaffy is the editor of '' A City is Not a Tree'', the 2015 book version of architect
Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and Design theory, design theorist. He was an Professors in the United States#Professor emeritus and emerita, emeritus profes ...
's 1965 essay by that title, including new commentaries by Mehaffy and other prominent colleagues in urban planning, architecture and other fields. He is the author of ''Urban Form and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Findings, Strategies, and Design Decision Support Technologies'', his Ph.D. dissertation, published as a book by
Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...
. Mehaffy is a contributing author to over twenty books, including ''The Oxford Conference: A Re-Evaluation of Education in Architecture'', and ''New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future''.


Ideas

Mehaffy is noted for his published research and professional articles on the works of
Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and Design theory, design theorist. He was an Professors in the United States#Professor emeritus and emerita, emeritus profes ...
,
Jane Jacobs Jane Isabel Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book ''The Death and Life of Great American Ci ...
, urban morphology, urban self-organization, architecture, computer science, and philosophy. Together with
Ward Cunningham Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki Excerpt from 2014 book '' The Innovators''. and was a co-author of the '' Manifesto for Agile Software Development''. Called a pioneer, and ...
, the inventor of
wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...
, he wrote a paper arguing for the importance of wiki as a "curated" process of acquiring and improving knowledge, while explaining its relationship to
pattern language A pattern language is an organized and coherent set of ''patterns'', each of which describes a problem and the core of a solution that can be used in many ways within a specific field of expertise. The term was coined by architect Christopher Ale ...
methodology. He has also worked extensively with
Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and Design theory, design theorist. He was an Professors in the United States#Professor emeritus and emerita, emeritus profes ...
and Nikos Salingaros to jointly develop new concepts of "generative codes" and urban self-organization. In the book ''Design for a Living Planet'', Mehaffy introduced "Place Network Theory," which he described as a "grand unified theory of urbanism" synthesizing the ideas of
Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and Design theory, design theorist. He was an Professors in the United States#Professor emeritus and emerita, emeritus profes ...
,
Jane Jacobs Jane Isabel Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book ''The Death and Life of Great American Ci ...
, Kevin Lynch,
Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, inclu ...
,
René Thom René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he became ...
,
Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; ; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Librari ...
and others. In philosophy, Mehaffy has argued for a "neo-structuralism" to inform architecture and urbanism, and to resolve key problems in philosophy and linguistics. Mehaffy argued that the abstractions of language should be regarded as physical structures in the world, no different in nature from the structures they represent, but that they are distinctive only in the symmetric relationships that humans exploit to map experience and to guide action. He has referred to this theory as “Symmetric Structuralism”.


Practice, teaching and research

Mehaffy is a practicing urban planner and designer, with a key role in a number of noted projects including Orenco Station, a walkable mixed-use transit-oriented development on the Portland, Oregon light rail line. He has also been active in developing a number of urban design innovations including "sprawl retrofit," to help reconfigure sprawling, fragmented suburban developments into complete, walkable neighborhoods, and "generative codes," design codes that promote greater self-organization and adaptive form. Mehaffy has held periodic appointments in teaching or research at the
University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...
,
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...
, the
University of Strathclyde The University of Strathclyde () is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal charter in 1964 as the first techn ...
in Glasgow, UK, the
University of Trento The University of Trento (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Trento'') is an Italian university located in Trento and nearby Rovereto. It has been able to achieve considerable results in didactics, research, and international relations accord ...
in Trento, Italy, and Tecnologico de Monterrey in Querétaro, Mexico. As Director of Education at
The Prince's Foundation for Building Community The King's Foundation (formerly the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture until 2001, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment until 2012, the Prince's Foundation for Building Community until 2018, and the Prince's Foundation until 2 ...
, he developed an education curriculum that formed the basis of a new Masters of Science in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford. He was the Academic Chair of the Future of Places, a partnership of UN-Habitat, the Project for Public Space, and the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, and a lead-in conference series to the 2016 United Nations Habitat III conference. He was also Project Manager for the European School of Architecture and Urbanism, an EU-funded pilot curriculum with five university partners. Mehaffy is a Fellow of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a Senior Fellow of the Center for Local Governance, and a member of the INTBAU College of Traditional Practitioners.


Education

Mehaffy studied music composition and the arts at
California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a Private university, private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for ...
for his first two years of college study, before transferring to
Evergreen State College The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a ...
where he received his Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts, science and architecture in 1978. He studied philosophy of science at the Graduate School of the
University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
, and architecture and urban planning at The
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
, before earning his PhD in architecture at
Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...
. As a member of the Faculty of Architecture at Delft, he worked on urban form and climate change, pattern languages, and new wiki technologies in design.


Personal life

Mehaffy was the youngest of six children. He has three daughters with his former wife Pamela Mehaffy, and seven grandchildren.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mehaffy, Michael Architects from Portland, Oregon Living people 1955 births People from Beaumont, Texas American architects Writers from Portland, Oregon California Institute of the Arts alumni University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts alumni Evergreen State College alumni UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design alumni Delft University of Technology alumni New Urbanism New Classical architects