University of Toronto, Canada
Karen Chapple, PhD, is the Director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, where she serves as Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning and the Faculty of Information. She is also Professor Emerita of City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2023, Chapple received the Regional Studies Association’s Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Contribution to the Field.
Chapple studies inequalities in the planning, development, and governance of cities and regions in the Americas, with a focus on economic development and housing. Her recent books include Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions (2015), which won the John Friedmann Book Award; Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? (2019); and Fragile Governance and Local Economic Development (2018). She co-authored the open-source textbook Urban Data Storytelling, Analytics, and Visualization in 2025.
In 2015, she co-founded and still directs the Urban Displacement Project, a research portal examining patterns of residential, commercial, and industrial displacement, as well as policy solutions. Since 2006, she has served as faculty director of the UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation, providing over $2 million in technical assistance to community organizations and government agencies. She has conducted economic development research and advised officials internationally across the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Chapple holds a B.A. from Columbia University, an MS from Pratt Institute, and a PhD from UC Berkeley. Prior to academia, she spent ten years as a practicing planner in New York and San Francisco.