Papers by Michael Mehaffy
Lightning Interview series, 2009
Ecology and the Environment, Dec 10, 2019
The New Urban Agenda, developed at the UN-Habitat III conference on sustainable urban development... more The New Urban Agenda, developed at the UN-Habitat III conference on sustainable urban development and later adopted by consensus by 193 countries, includes nine paragraphs affirming the importance of robust public space networks for sustainable and functional cities. But what are the essential requirements for functional public space in cities? What are the current challenges and shortcomings-especially at a time of rapid urbanization, and the decline of public spaces in many cities? We report on a literature survey done by the Centre for the Future of Places at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, as part of a collaboration with UN-Habitat towards implementation of the New Urban Agenda. The literature provides ample evidence that public spaces are arenas for numerous potential conflicts, but also, if properly allocated and structured, places of peaceful copresence, creative interaction, participation, and co-production. Furthermore, a critical aspect of successful public space is the ability to self-organise into a structure of territorial regions, combining private interiors with connective public edges. We discuss larger lessons for city structure, design and development strategy, and sustainable urbanisation for the future.
Routledge eBooks, May 13, 2020
Socially-Organized Housing: a New Approach to Urban Structure, 2019
A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes, 2019
A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes, 2019
Design for a Living Planet: Settlement, Science, & the Human Future, 2015
A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes, 2019
Socially-Organized Housing: a New Approach to Urban Structure, 2019
Socially-Organized Housing: a New Approach to Urban Structure, 2019
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Papers by Michael Mehaffy
Yet curiously, the one field where pattern methodology has lagged most conspicuously is the one where it began, the built environment. In part, the popular appeal of the 1977 book served to “freeze” the initial set of patterns, greatly slowing further peer-to-peer development – contrary to the original authors’ stated aims. As one remedy we present here, in one of many hoped-for future companion volumes to the original classic book, a new collection of 80 patterns for a new era of urban challenges. Its authors include several long-time collaborators of the original lead author of A Pattern Language.
This new collection emerged in part from a five-year collaboration with UN-Habitat to address new urban challenges, including rapid urbanization, slum upgrading, sustainable urbanism, emerging technologies, and new tools and strategies to meet these and other challenges. However, there remains an urgent need to develop and share tools and strategies grounded in research evidence, and subject to revision, addition, and refinement, with new findings from new collaborators.
This volume aims to meet that need – together with the launch of an online companion pattern “repository”, available at npl.wiki. Both initiatives were developed in collaboration with Ward Cunningham, wiki inventor, and pioneer of pattern languages of programming as well as Agile Methodology. Both are meant to expand the capacity of pattern languages in support of a hopeful new era of open-source, human-centered, life-enriching technology.
The technology of A Pattern Language launched Wikipedia and the other programming methods we advanced. We are pleased to be a part of the cyber life of this work, returning again to have an impact on the built world.
- Ward Cunningham, inventor of wiki, and co-developer of pattern languages of programming
“The fact is, that we have written [the original] book as a first step in the society-wide process by which people will gradually become conscious of their own pattern languages, and work to improve them… we imagine this pattern language might be related to the countless thousands of other languages we hope that people will make for themselves, in the future...”
- Christopher Alexander and co-authors, A Pattern Language (1977)