Professor Karen Chapple is the Director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, where she also serves as Professor in the Department of Geography & Planning. She is Professor Emerita of City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as department chair and held the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Urban Studies.
Chapple studies inequalities in the planning, development, and governance of regions in the Americas, with a focus on economic development and housing. In 2023 Chapple received the Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Contribution to the Field from the Regional Studies Association. Her recent books include Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions: Towards More Equitable Development (Routledge, 2015), which won the John Friedmann Book Award from the American Collegiate Schools of Planning; 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… Read more
Meet the teams
Nouman Ashraf
Special Advisor of Pedagogy, School of Cities & Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Rotman School of Management
Karen Chapple
Director, School of Cities
Prentiss Dantzler
Director, Housing Justice Lab; Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Richard Florida
Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Cities; University Professor, Rotman School of Management
Mark S. Fox
Director, Urban Data Centre; Distinguished Professor, Urban Systems Engineering; Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Marianne Hatzopoulou
Professor, Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering
Aditi Mehta
Faculty Advisor, School of Cities India & Mixed Methods Workshop; Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Urban Studies, Innis College
Nasim Niknafs
Co-director of the Creative Communities Commons; Associate Professor of Music Education, Faculty of Music; Associate Dean, Research and Coordinator of Music Education
Stanka Radovic
Associate Professor, Department of English, UTM
David Roberts
Academic Director, Multidisciplinary Urban Capstone Project, School of Cities; Associate Professor, Teaching Stream & Director, Urban Studies, Innis College
Daniel Silver
Co-director of the Creative Communities Commons; Professor, Department of Sociology, UTSC
Karan Singh
Associate Director, School of Cities India
Lindsey Smith
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Planning
Nidhi Subramanyam
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Planning
Jeff Allen
Senior Research Associate; Lead, Data Visualization
Tony Chang
Communications Officer
Katherine Danks
Program Officer
Kosta Diochnos
Knowledge Translation Specialist
Kathryn Exon Smith
Senior Research Officer
Austin Grant
Program Coordinator
Felicity Heyworth
Senior Communications Officer
Gabriela Pawlus Kasprzak
Senior Education Officer
Jay Kraus
Videographer
Ben Liu
Executive Director
Lara Muldoon
Assistant Director, Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives
Galina Safonenko
Business Officer
Serene Tan
Research Officer
Makda Teshome
Program Coordinator, Leading Social Justice Collective
Cindy Wong
Finance and Administration Officer
Prentiss Dantzler
Director, Housing Justice Lab; Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Steven Farber
Interim Director, Mobility Network; Professor, Department of Human Geography, UTSC
Mark S. Fox
Director, Urban Data Centre; Distinguished Professor, Urban Systems Engineering; Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Nasim Niknafs
Co-director of the Creative Communities Commons; Associate Professor of Music Education, Faculty of Music; Associate Dean, Research and Coordinator of Music Education
Matti Siemiatycki
Director, Infrastructure Institute; Professor, Department of Geography & Planning
Daniel Silver
Co-director of the Creative Communities Commons; Professor, Department of Sociology, UTSC
Enid Slack
Director, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance
Heather Dorries
Assistant Professor, Centre for Indigenous Studies & Department of Geography & Planning
Steven Farber
Interim Director, Mobility Network; Professor, Department of Human Geography, UTSC
Richard Florida
Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Cities; University Professor, Rotman School of Management
Mark S. Fox
Director, Urban Data Centre; Distinguished Professor, Urban Systems Engineering; Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Chelsea Rochman
Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Laura Rosella
Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & Temerty Faculty of Medicine
Shoshanna Saxe
Associate Professor, Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering
Matti Siemiatycki
Director, Infrastructure Institute; Professor, Department of Geography & Planning
Enid Slack
Director, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance
Rebecca Alty
Canadian Urban Leader
Ana Bailão
Canadian Urban Leader
Lanrick Bennett Jr.
Urbanist-in-Residence
Sam Carter-Shamai
Early Career Canadian Urban Leader
Nation Cheong
Urbanist-in-Residence
Zahra Ebrahim
Urbanist-in-Residence
Kofi Hope
Urbanist-in-Residence
Mitzie Hunter
Canadian Urban Leader
Mona El Khafif
Visiting Professor
Orly Linovski
Visiting Professor
Dawn Parker
Visiting Professor
Carolyn Whitzman
Senior Housing Researcher and Adjunct Professor, School of Cities
Charley Willison
Visiting Professor
Laura Wolf-Powers
Visiting Professor
Paul Boniface Akaabre
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Cities
Amir Forouhar
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Cities
Yinnon Geva
Postdoctoral Fellow, Infrastructure Institute
Byeonghwa Jeong
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Cities
Tamara Kerzhner
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Cities
Stephanie Ortynsky
Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance
Learn more about our Affiliated Faculty here.