Mike Dobbins teaches urban design theory and practice as a part-time visiting professor in the Architecture and City and Regional Planning programs at Georgia Tech. Presently, he teaches urban design studios in the architecture and planning programs, a lecture/seminar course on urban design policy and implementation and a freehand drawing course for planners. In addition, he is authoring a book on urban design under contract with Wiley and Sons, scheduled for publication in 2008.

His career focus is to elevate civic and urban design as a core guiding discipline necessary for people to improve the places where they live, work and travel. He has practiced for 42 years, mostly as a public planning and urban design administrator in New York, New Orleans, Birmingham, Berkeley, 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.

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, permitting 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 Congress for New Urbanism and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He has been active in these organizations at the local and national level, serving on a variety of design assistance panels around the country and abroad. He has received a variety of honors and awards, most recently the Ivan Allen, Sr. Award of the Atlanta Chapter of the AIA.

Dobbins grew up in Denver, and he received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Architecture degrees from Yale University.