University of Minnesota

Faculty + Staff

rotating images of landscape architecture

Robert Sykes

Associate Professor

  • BLA, University of Minnesota
  • MLA with distinction, Harvard University

Robert Sykes is interested in exploring the issues and relationships among land development, urban infrastructure and urban design. In recent years he has focused especially on storm water management as it informs site planning and design. In particular, he has completed several projects investigating alternative site planning and design proposals and approaches using quantification of runoff rates and volumes as a measurable indicator of nutrient flow in the landscape over time.

In the past, he has worked with a range of experts to develop and explore methods of enabling, financing and managing alternative infrastructure systems to support better land planning and design approaches, such as cluster or conservation development. Working in partnership with Jon E. Kingstad, and attorney, and Paul Jacobs MBA, he established the Center for Rural Technology and Cooperative Development in the Department of Landscape Architecture. Working through the center, they partnered to invent the concept of water quality cooperatives (WQC), and pioneered the establishment of the nation’s first two water quality cooperatives. WQCs are member-owned, private, non-profit associations. They allow rural residents to employ group buying to make affordable the legal, business, and engineering expertise necessary to employ alternative technologies for supplying and treating water for new development and existing rural centers. In terms of land design, they enable the use of cluster development and open space development by providing the alternative infrastructure needed to make them viable.

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