Who we are

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