Congratulations to ITS affiliate Professor Dan Chatman, who was recently appointmented Chair of the Department of City & Regional Planning.Professor Chatman’s research investigates issues of equity, race, immigration, gentrification, environmental impact, and well-being through the lens of transportation and land use policy. To the Department, he brings expertise on how to drive planning and policies that achieve sustainability without increasing the cost of living and inequity.
In the academic year 2021-2022, Professor Chatman served as interim Co-Chair with Daniel Rodriguez. Chatman will assume the role of Chair beginning in July.
Before joining UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning in 2009, Chatman was an assistant professor of urban planning and policy at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. He holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley, a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning.
Chatman works on the potential of transportation and land use policies to influence travel behavior, the use of automobiles and public transportation, travel choice impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and citizen well-being. Along with strategies for reducing auto use, he analyzes state policies intended to increase sustainability in balance with access to housing and ways that states can plan for technological change without exacerbating inequity.
Professor Chatman is recognized for addressing issues of social, ethnic and racial equity, using intensive data collection and analysis techniques to provide substantive and actionable insights that can inform municipal agencies. In his research and teaching, he is especially deft at asking questions and teasing out answers critical for complex policy challenges that impact large metropolitan populations.
His peer-reviewed journal articles include an examination of whether gentrification near transit stations increases driving, the impact of transportation alternatives and well-being of people who move into a new residence, the equity impacts of congestion pricing for parking, and the perceptions of public transportation on the part of immigrants to the US.
Chatman’s work is recognized internationally. In addition to speaking across the US, he has been invited to Tanzania and Chile to address equitable transportation in Latin America, Asia and Africa.