Professor of Practice Mike Dobbins
Master of Architecture, Yale University, 1965.
B.A., Yale University, 1960.
Mike Dobbins is a professor of the practice of urban design, jointly appointed to Georgia Tech's City and Regional Planning Program and its Architecture Program at the College of Architecture. Presently, he teaches urban design studios in the planning and architecture programs, a lecture/seminar course on urban design policy and implementation, and a freehand drawing course for planners. His new book on urban design, Urban Design and People, published by John Wiley and Sons in April of 2009, is directed at all with an interest in improving their civic environment. For students, it is a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of urban design and development. For citizens, it is a guide for how to assure that design and development initiatives get done in a way to leave things better than they were before. And for urban design and development practitioners, it is a reference to the expertise and the “turf” of all those disciplines necessary to get the job done.
He has practiced for over 40 years, mostly as public planning and urban design administrator in New York, New Orleans, Birmingham, Berkeley, and most recently as the Commissioner of Planning, Development, and Neighborhood Conservation for the City of Atlanta (1996-2002). He has taught at Columbia, Tulane, Birmingham Southern, and UC Berkeley before coming to Atlanta and subsequently at Georgia Tech, whose faculty he joined in 2002.
Through his career, he has promoted design as crucial among all those disciplines that together develop the policy, programming, design, and implementation of urban places. He has put the design tool in the hands of neighborhoods, business districts, developers, and local governments to bring about positive change in land use, transportation, and environmental planning and design. He has translated design guidance into the regulatory and financing frameworks that carry out municipal development. In these applications, design becomes a reflective, connective, communicative, and visioning skill, responding to community aspirations and encouraging place-making partners to conceptualize more equitable and livable futures.
Dobbins is a registered architect in Georgia and California, a member of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners, the Urban Land Institute, the Congress for The New Urbanism, and he is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He has been active in these organizations at the local and national levels. Both through these and independently he has served communities and organizations around the country as a planning and design advisor, most recently as a member of the selection committee for the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence in 2009. He has received a variety of awards and honors. He grew up in Denver, and he received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Architecture degrees from Yale University.