SPEAKER BIO: Michael W Mehaffy, Ph.D., is a researcher, educator, author, and consultant in urban development with international practice.  He is also the Executive Director of the Sustasis Foundation, an Oregon public benefit non-profit focused on research and publication in front-line urban issues. He has held teaching and/or research appointments in architecture, urban planning, and philosophy at eight graduate institutions in seven countries, and he is on the editorial boards of three international journals of urban design. Michael is also the former President of the Goose Hollow Foothills League, the venerable Portland neighborhood association. He has consulted for the City of Portland, Metro, and many other local governments, and he has taught architecture and urbanism at the University of Oregon's Portland graduate campus. He was the project manager for the master developer of Orenco Station, the pioneering transit-oriented development on Portland's Westside MAX line. 

Michael has been especially interested in Portland's lessons as an internationally celebrated urban laboratory with a number of notable successes, but also a number of cautionary mistakes and lessons learned. Michael now lives in the Columbia Gorge nearby two daughters and seven grandchildren, but still fondly considers Portland a second home.