Robert Lane

Robert Lane is an urban designer and Director of the Design Program at the Regional Plan Association. The RPA is an independent, not-for-profit regional planning organization. Since 1922, the organization has studied the 31-county New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region, especially its transportation and open space networks, in order to improve quality of life and economic competitiveness. In 1929, the RPA published its landmark Regional Plan of New York and its Environs. In 1968, the Second Regional Plan focused on the deteriorated mass transit system, preserving threatened natural resources and revitalizing our urban centers. In 1996, the Third Regional Plan was published, and today the RPA's current work continues to be aimed largely at implementing the ideas put forth in the Third Plan, with efforts focused in five project areas: community design, open space, transportation, workforce and the economy, and housing.

As an urban designer at RPA, Lane is currently working on a Comprehensive Master Plan for Stamford, Connecticut and a Transit-Friendly Communities plan for New Jersey. His other projects have included the Hastings-on-Hudson Waterfront Plan and the East Harlem 2nd Avenue Subway Community Visioning Workshop. Two of his research projects-- one on industrial redevelopment strategies in American cities and the other on the urban design issues associated with "superstore" development in New York's manufacturing districts-- have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, exhibited at the Municipal Art Society, and published in PLACES and HARVARD ARCHITECTURE REVIEW. Before coming to RPA, Lane was an Associate at Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects. Trained first as an architect, he received his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University.

Robert Lane's essay "The Supercontext for Urban Design: Implications and Representations," in CONSTELLATIONS: CONSTRUCTING URBAN DESIGN PRACTICES (2007), is required reading for this course.

See www.rpa.org and www.rpa.org/aboutrpa/staff/roblane.html
See also www.rpa.org/pdf/RPAMoynihanStation.pdf