Sustasis Foundation

About the Sustasis Foundation

The Foundation's name, Sustasis, is a Greek word that means "to stand together" as in a collaboration. The Foundation is a small catalytic organization that seeks to convene other collaborators in strategic ways, and thereby leverage its small resources for maximum effect. We develop and share tools to promote vibrant, livable neighborhoods, while at the same time addressing the critical issues of resource depletion and climate change. We focus on capacity-building tools at the neighborhood scale, including codes, pattern languages, peer-to-peer design tools, and regulatory tools and incentives that make it easier to do good development.

We were formed in 2007 to take forward recovery planning work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Working as part of the Unified New Orleans Plan team, we recognized that "top-down" planning and aid from government entities would not be sufficient, and new "bottom-up" approaches were also badly needed -- including peer-to-peer and "capacity-building" tools at the neighborhood scale. Following the suggestion of Andy Kopplin, Executive Director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, we incorporated as a non-profit "public benefit" corporation to take forward this work. Since then we have continued our work on a related set of topics within a range of projects in the US and internationally.

Our foundation's work can be divided into three categories:

Publications: We publish books, videos, webinars, and wikis, furthering our educational mission.

Project consulting and research activities: We work on a number of project collaborations, including neighborhood-scale development projects and peer-reviewed research. We focus on the topics of sustainable urban development, climate change, and social and ecological resilience. Executive director Michael Mehaffy serves as advisor to a number of research projects and NGOs, and sits on the boards of two international urban research journals.

Michael has also played a strategic role in the recovery planning of New Orleans, where he developed proposals for resilience and capacity-building. A notable example is a proposal for "Neighborhood Resource Recovery Centers" that is now part of the Unified New Orleans Plan, which has now been adopted as the City's permanent master plan.

ESRG - The Environmental Structure Research Group: The ESRG is a consortium or "research coordination network" that we facilitate, convening over 30 leading researchers from around the world, including Christopher Alexander, Nikos Salingaros, Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, and a number of other "thought leaders," researchers, academics and practitioners.

The ESRG has held a number of symposia (at University College London, the University of Oregon, New Orleans and elsewhere) and published a number of papers on sustainable development and best practice in design, in Journal of Urbanism, Urban Design International and other leading professional journals.

For more information see our web page about the ESRG.

We are grateful for your support, however modest! We are a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit in the USA and all donations by US taxpayers are tax-deductible. We are registered with GuideStar, an information service for non-profit transparency and accountability. For more information visit our Guidestar Exchange Member page.

You can make a donation conveniently via this link:

We welcome your interest in this work, and we welcome your contact!

Sustasis Foundation

P.O. Box 2579

White Salmon, WA 98672

Email: sustasisfoundation at the gmail domain

Developing and applying neighborhood-scale tools for the complex challenges of the future