Michael Watkins is the founder of Michael Watkins Architect, LLC, an urban design and architecture firm dedicated to designing and implementing communities that are beautiful, diverse and sustainable.  The firm’s work includes the preparation of master plans for towns, neighborhoods and hamlets, revitalization and extension plans for existing communities, design guidelines and various town architect services for new and existing communities.  Watkins’ firm serves as the Town Architect for Norton Commons in Louisville, Ky. and as an Urban Design Officer for Leander, Tex. as well as Town Architect for other communities in Delaware, South Carolina, Ohio and elsewhere.  The firm collaborates with other New-Urbanist firms, among them:  TortiGallas and Partners, Placemakers, Urban Design Associates and the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community. 

Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company hired Watkins to open their Washington D.C. office in 1988.  While with DPZ, he served as the Town Architect for Kentlands, a 352-acre neo-traditional neighborhood northwest of Washington, D.C., led many charrettes for a wide variety of types of projects, and was a member of design teams for over sixty towns and neighborhoods in the United States and abroad. In 2007 Watkins left his position as Director of Town Planning with DPZ to enroll in the Masters program in Classical Design offered by The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America and the Georgia Institute of Technology.                                                                                                                                                                             

Watkins is one of several contributors to Andres Duany's SmartCode, a zoning ordinance that legalizes the development of traditional neighborhoods.  In 2003 he edited and produced The Guidebook to the Old and New Urbanism in the Baltimore / Washington Region.  Watkins speaks on the subject of traditional architecture and urban design at universities and conferences in the U.S. and abroad.  He is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.  Watkins was the 2018 recipient of the New Urban Guild’s Barranco Award and has been made a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the American Institute of Certified Planners.