ROBERT W. BURCHELL, Distinguished Professor at the Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, is the author of 30 books and more than 50 articles. Professor Burchell, co-director of the Center, is an expert on fiscal impact analysis, land-use development and regulation, and housing policy. Dr. Burchell co-authored the Development Impact Assessment Handbook for ULI-The Urban Land Institute. His major publications include The Fiscal Impact Handbook, The New Practitioner's Guide to Fiscal Impact Analysis, The Adaptive Reuse Handbook, and the Environmental Impact Handbook.

Robert W. Burchell, Ph.D. has served as principal investigator on more than $4 million in research spanning a thirty-year career at Rutgers. One of these efforts included the Impact Assessment of the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan, an encompassing study of the growth management program adopted by the New Jersey State Planning Commission in June 1992. This impact assessment was done in 1992 and repeated in 2001, in both cases a requirement for passage of the State Plan. Similar "costs of sprawl" studies have been done for the state of Maryland, the Lexington (KY) Metropolitan Area, the Delaware Estuary, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, and the South Carolina Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Dr. Burchell's seminal work in the area of development patterns and infrastructure costs is a just completed research project for the National Academy of Sciences and the Transportation Cooperative Research Program resulting in The Costs of Sprawl Revisited and The Costs of Sprawl-2000. Other recent projects include studies of regional mobility and mortgage-lending practices for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, several studies on housing policy for Fannie Mae, and multiple analyses of transportation policy for the U.S. Department of Transportation. Dr. Burchell has also completed nationwide program evaluations for the Economic Development Administration on its public works, defense adjustment, and revolving loan fund projects. These successful evaluations led to the reauthorization of EDA in 1998 for the first time in 20 years.

Robert W. Burchell, Ph.D., has served as a consultant to The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Health and Human Resources Administration, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and The Smith Richardson Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a trustee of the housing research group at the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) in Washington, D.C. Dr. Burchell, who holds a doctorate in urban planning from Rutgers University, is a licensed professional planner in New Jersey and is in demand as an expert witness nationally.