New ITS Faculty: Dan Chatman Joins Department of City and Regional Planning
Rutgers' loss is Berkeley's gain this summer as Dan Chatman, an assistant professor of urban planning, leaves his post in New Jersey to return to the Berkeley campus.
Chatman, who grew up in San Jose and has family in the Bay Area, has crossed the country multiple times in his academic career. But his recent faculty appointment to the Department of City and Regional Planning allows him to return to the area he calls home—and to the campus where he began his academic journey.
After receiving his BA in English at Berkeley, Chatman moved to Boston where he obtained a master's degree in public policy at Harvard, then headed west again to UCLA where he received a PhD in urban planning in 2005.
In addition to teaching, Chatman held the positions of director and research director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers.
"Rutgers was very good to me, and I have very good relationships with faculty and students there. The planning program there is one of the best in the country. That said, Berkeley has a stellar city and regional planning program, also with great students and faculty. I think it will be very intellectually dynamic and exciting," he wrote in an email to NewsBITS.
This fall, Chatman will teach two graduate courses: transportation and land use planning, and statistical analysis.
His research interests include travel behavior and the built environment, water governance policy, municipal fiscal decision-making, and local economic development. He is also interested in working on transportation finance and institutional issues relating to the adoption of climate change mitigation goals. "Both are particularly relevant in the California context," he noted.
"Dan Chatman's expertise in transportation finance and transportation policy will help fill the gap that resulted from Martin Wachs' retirement in 2006," said ITS Director Samer Madanat.
Once settled in Berkeley, Chatman will continue his current research on immigrants and transportation and on the economic impacts of transit investment. In addition, he is writing a book about the "smart growth" movement.
Links to a sampling of Dan Chatman's articles:
Deconstructing development density: Quality, quantity and price effects on household travel. Transportation Research A 42 (7): 1009-1031, 2008.
Will transportation credit mortgages work in practice? Intransition Magazine, Spring, 2007, pp. 5-6.
How workplace land use affects personal commercial travel and commute mode choice. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1831: 193-201, 2003.
As jobs sprawl, whither the commute? Access 23 (Fall): 14-19, 2003 (with R. Crane).
Traffic and sprawl: Evidence from US commuting, 1985 to 1997. Planning and Markets, 6 (1): 14-22, 2003 (with R. Crane).