Michael Mehaffy
Michael Mehaffy, Ph.D., is a development consultant, researcher, planner, designer, author, and president of Structura Naturalis Inc., his consultancy. He has held ten university appointments in eight countries in research and/or teaching, including most recently as Senior Researcher at the University of Notre Dame. He is a Fellow of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Urban Guild.
New Urbanism in the New Urban Agenda: Threads of an unfinished (global) reformation
The two charters represent a “paradigm shift” in the shaping of cities and towns, away from machinery and machine thinking, and back towards people. A May conference in Paris will explore them both.
Cities are like brains—immense networks of connective tissue
Intriguing lessons for urbanists are coming, surprisingly, from neuroscience. Understanding the underlying structure of cities can help us to formulate better urban policies and practices.
Why we need ‘sociable distancing’
The false duality between dense public spaces and isolated private ones misses the complexity of all the diverse—and relatively safe—urban places in between.


