Biography

Robert Lang is an internationally recognized authority on urban growth, economic development, and population dynamics, including the interplay between politics and growth in the America's metropolitan areas. Lang is often called on by national business leaders and media to provide an understanding economic recovery in the west (including Nevada), what elements led to the region’s economic decline, and what it will take to bring it back.

His research specialties include real estate, demographic and spatial analysis, economic development, transportation and infrastructure, and metropolitan policy.

He has authored more than 220 academic and professional publications and has developed many new urban planning concepts such as the "Sun Corridor," "Boomburbs," and "Edgeless Cities." His book, Megapolitan America, details the rise of megapolitan areas across the U.S. Lang's research has been featured in numerous media outlets, including USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report, and he's appeared as an expert commenter on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, CBS News, ABC News, and National Public Radio. 

Lang is a professor of public policy in the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs and serves as executive director of both Brookings Mountain West and The Lincy Institute at UNLV. He is a resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and has served as a Fulbright Fellow in Urban Geography in Paris, an Academic Fellow at the Urban Land Institute, and as a Planning Fellow at the Lincon Institute of Land Policy. Lang has twice served as editor for the academic journal Housing Policy Debate.