Robert Lane, Senior Fellow for Urban Design at Regional Plan Association, directs the Centers Program which is devoted to combating sprawl and promoting compact, transit-oriented development.

Mr. Lane's current and recent past work focuses on the relationship between transit, land use and urban design and emphasizes public participation and communication through visual techniques. These include: the Somerville Station Area Vision Plan which modeled transit-oriented development on the landfill site near the NJ Transit Somerville Station; the MetroNorth Railroad Harlem Line Extension Project (Dutchess County, New York) which contrasted transit-oriented and sprawl development patterns around the new Wassaic station; The Glenbrook-Springdale Community Design Workshop during which stakeholders and residents created station-area plans for these two Stamford neighborhoods on the New Canaan branch line: and the Nassau Hub Transportation and Land Use Study (Nassau County, New York) which visualized in-fill development around a new light rail line in this major edge city. Other projects include the Newark Arts District community design workshop (Newark, New Jersey) and the urban design component of the RPA sponsored workshop on the future of Governors Island, the former Coast Guard facility in the New York harbor.

Mr. Lane is an architect and urban designer who combines urban design and planning research with twenty years of professional practice. Over the last ten years, Mr. Lane has initiated and completed two major independent research projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. The first project, The Machine Next Door, examined industrial redevelopment strategies in American cities. This work was exhibited at the Municipal Art Society in New York City and has been published in Places magazine and in the Harvard Architecture Review. The second project, Beyond the Box, focused on the urban design issues associated with "superstore" development in New York's manufacturing districts. This work was also the subject of an exhibition at the Municipal Art Society and has been published in Oculus and Progressive Architecture magazines. A book is in progress with the Princeton Architecture Press.

Before coming to RPA, Robert Lane was an Associate at Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects, PC where he was Project Architect and Project Manager for a number of large, complex architecture and urban design projects. Mr. Lane received his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University.

Robert Lane was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design during the '08-'09 academic year.