Robert Boyer, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at UNC Charlotte, where he teaches courses on urban planning and urban sustainability.

His research focuses on experimentation in the built environment, specifically how grassroots environmental movements influence long-term plans for urban and regional development.

He is interested in alternative residential development models like cohousing and ecovillages, and how these community spaces nurture innovation in construction, transportation, and other material practices.

A seasoned performer of improvisational comedy, Boyer has published research on the usefulness of improvisational comedy as a metaphor for how plans work as signals in complex, multi-actor urban regions.

He is also interested in how sharing can help solve long-term environmental problems in cities and the globe.

He earned his PhD in 2013 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he is a Chicago-area native.