Korkut Onaran, Ph.D., is an urban planner, architect, teacher, and scholar with a broad knowledge of environmental systems and regulation cultures, a subject he explored extensively through his practice, teaching, and research. He has been exploring practical ways of creating resilient communities in the face of the climate crisis, with some of his ideas on this subject summarized in his most recent book, Urbanism for a Difficult Future: Practical Responses to the Climate Crisis (Routledge, 2022). He also recently published Crafting Form-Based Codes: Resilient Design, Policy and Regulation (Routledge, 2018).

Korkut owns Pel-Ona Architects & Urbanists with his business partner Ronnie Pelusio. Pel-Ona Architects & Urbanists, formed in 2010, is a small firm specializing in good urbanism, offering code writing, master planning, urban design, and architectural services.

Korkut has been teaching as an adjunct in the College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado at Denver, since 1997. His teaching focuses on form-based codes, urbanism, small-town and tourism planning. He advocates achieving resilience via localization and community building. He was honored as the Mentor of the Year by AIA Colorado North in 2007. He is one of the leading founders of the Colorado Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, of which he served as president between 2008 and 2018.

Korkut received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Architecture at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, and his Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Korkut received first prize for his poetry chapbook in the 2007 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Competition, and second prize in the 2006 Baltimore Review Poetry Competition. His poetry books include The Trident Poems (World Enough Writers, 2018) and İstanbul’s Tulip (WordTech Editions, 2024).