Mitch Porteous
Co-founder and CEO
Mitch works across planning systems, community-led urban projects and green infrastructure. He speaks on how clearer systems and shared leadership make cities work better for everyone.
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He co-founded Microforest Collective, a registered charity delivering community-led green infrastructure nationally. He is also founder and CEO of BlockPlanner, a property consultancy and advocacy practice helping ACT homeowners, developers and communities move projects forward.
His projects span the Cohousing Canberra bid, the ACT's largest cohousing initiative, taken through government tender with cross-party political support and national media coverage, and the City Hill activation, a government-backed design competition for Canberra's most prominent civic precinct.
His TEDx talk made the case that giving ordinary people the tools, frameworks and agency to shape their own neighbourhoods produces better outcomes, deeper engagement and lower costs than top-down delivery alone.
Mitch is an accredited economic development practitioner and a Non-Executive Director of EveryMan Australia.
Talks
- Building with communities, not for themThe projects that move fastest make community leadership part of the delivery and cost model from day one, drawn from cohousing, place activation and green infrastructure across the ACT.
- Nature-based cities: the delivery problemSustainability ambition has outpaced delivery. The projects closing the gap are community-initiated, land-partner-enabled and built for long-term stewardship.
- Advocacy as a development toolHow community mobilisation, political relationships and media strategy work together to get a project or policy across the line.
- What legible planning does to a cityWhat happens to advocacy, policy and development when ordinary people can see what they can build on their own block, and what it will cost.
