Karen Chapple

Karen Chapple, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she holds the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Urban Studies. Chapple studies inequalities in the planning, development, and governance of regions in the U.S. and Latin America. Her recent books include Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions: Towards More Equitable Development (Routledge 2015, and winner of the John Friedmann Book Award); Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities (with Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, MIT Press, 2019); and Fragile Governance and Local Economic Development: Theory and Evidence from Peripheral Regions in Latin America (with Sergio Montero, Routledge, 2018). In Fall 2015, she co-founded the Urban Displacement Project, a research portal examining patterns of residential, commercial, and industrial displacement, as well as policy solutions. Chapple holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Columbia University, an M.S.C.R.P from the Pratt Institute, and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. In July, 2021, she will join the University of Toronto as the inaugural Director of the School of Cities and Professor of the Department of Geography and Planning.