Robert E. Lang Robert E. Lang has made a strong mark as one of America’s pre-eminent experts on the many faces — urban, suburban and exurban — of physical and population growth across North America. Case in point — his book, Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis, examining the expansion of citistates far beyond the limits anyone even imagined in earlier times.

On the institutional side, Lang is currently a professor of sociology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas as well as director of Brookings Institution Mountain West headquartered there.  He is also the interim director of the Lincy Institute at UNLV.  In addition, he a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Fellow of the Urban Land Institute, both in Washington, DC.

Prior to joining UNLV, Dr. Lang was a professor and director of the Urban Affairs and Planning program at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Virginia, where he served as the founding director of the Metropolitan Institute.  Prior to Virginia Tech, he was director of Urban and Metropolitan Research at Fannie Mae in Washington, DC. He has also served as editor on several academic journals, including Housing Policy Debate and the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Lang’s  research specialties include demographic and spatial analysis, housing and the built environment, metropolitan governance and regulatory issues, and urban topics such as downtown development and gentrification. He has authored over 60 professional publications on a wide range of topics, and has developed many new urban planning concepts.

Lang’s research has been featured in the USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, US News and World Report and reported on by NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and ABC World News Tonight.  He is also co-author of an edited book entitled Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000, and  Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities (2007).

In 2008, Dr Lang was a Fulbright Fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 2006, he was a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University. Dr. Lang was also recently a Planning and Development Fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, MA, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the University of California, Riverside.

Speech Topics

Robert Lang’s speeches revolve around several compelling topic areas:

  • American Cities in a Globalizing World
  • Edgeless Cities
  • Redefining Urban and Suburban America, Evidence from Census 2000
  • From Wall Street to Your Street: New Finance and Design Solutions
  • Micropolitan America: A Brand New Geography
  • Meeting Affordable Housing Challenges

Last updated February 1, 2010.