Award-winning planner Robin Foster, an expert on coastal issues and active volunteer with many local nonprofit organizations, died July 23 at his Kailua home after an extended illness. He was 58 years old.

In honoring Foster with its first Dinell Award last November, the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Department of Urban and Regional Planning aptly described his ongoing efforts "to assure that the person with small resources and little power is able to participate" and his "stubborn insistence on doing what is right, especially for those whose voices are seldom heard."

A Baltimore native who moved to Honolulu from Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1963 with his family, Foster graduated from Punahou, earned his bachelor's degree from Yale, and his master's in public health as well as urban and regional planning from UH.

Foster joined PlanPacific as a vice president in 1995 after nearly 15 years with the city, including a stint as head of the planning department. At PlanPacific, he won a national American Planning Association award for his 2000 revision of Kaua'i County's general plan.

One of the founders of Waikiki Community Center, Foster was an active volunteer with Honolulu Community Action Program (Wai'anae), Kokua Kalihi Valley, the Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i, the Episcopal Home Foundation, the Arcadia Foundation, Hoa 'Aina O Maakaha, and Honolulu Diamond Sangha.

He also served on the boards of Mental Health Kokua and the Mental Health Association in Hawai'i, and was past president of the Hawai'i Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Survivors include his wife, Deborah Pope; sons John and William; father James W. Foster; brother Nelson and sister Dorothy of California, and aunts Ellen F. Althouse of Cape Cod, Suzanne R. Sherwood of Baltimore, and Elizabeth R, Cleaver of Providence, R.I.

A private service is planned in August. Contributions in his memory can be made to Kokua Kalihi Valley, Mental Health Kokua, or Amyloidosis Treatment and Research Center at Boston University.

Obituary information provided by John Whalen, PlanPacific.