Author: Karen D. Chapple

Year of DDRG Award: 1997

Grantee University: University of California, Berkeley

Dissertation Title: Paths to Employment: The Role of Social Networks and Space for Women on Welfare in San Francisco

Current Employment: Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Research Subject Areas: Metropolitan Poverty, Regional Economic Development, Neighborhood Revitalization

Biography:
Karen Chapple is an associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. She has most recently published on regional economic resilience (in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society), interdisciplinary approaches for planning and performance studies (in the Journal of Planning Education and Research), and the failure of poverty dispersal policies (in Housing Policy Debate). Notable other publications focus on spatial mismatch, the relationship between job growth and housing price appreciation, regional fair share housing programs, workforce development in information technology, and the role of social networks in the job search for the urban poor. Her current research investigates patterns of metropolitan poverty and the challenges of creating and maintaining mixed-income communities. In 2006, Dr. Chapple founded the Center for Community Innovation (http://communityinnovation.berkeley.edu), a "think-do" tank focusing on housing, community, and economic development issues. Recent projects include studies of the potential for gentrification and displacement near transit-oriented development for the Association of Bay Area Governments; the relationship between the arts, commercial, and residential revitalization in low-income neighborhoods; and a set of studies on the green economy and industrial land supply in California. Dr. Chapple holds a B.A. in urban dtudies (Phi Beta Kappa) from Columbia University, an M.S.C.R.P from the Pratt Institute, and a Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley. She has served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota and the University of Pennsylvania, in addition to UC-Berkeley. From 2006-09, she held the Theodore Bo and Doris Shoong Lee Chair in Environmental Design. She is a founding member of the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Building Resilient Regions. Until 2008, Chapple served as co-editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and she continues to serve on the board of that journal as well as Economic Development Quarterly.

Read all DDRG spotlight biographies

• The Relative Importance of Space and Race in Urban Young Adult Labor Markets
• Getting Saved From Poverty: Religion in Poverty to Work Programs
• Paths to Employment: The Role of Social Networks and Space for Women on Welfare in San Francisco
• Place or Person?: A Labor Market Analysis of Central-City Poverty
• Work and Home Boundaries: Socio-Spatial Analysis of Women's Live-Work Environments
• The Work of Cities: Underemployment and Urban Change in Late-Century America
• Welfare to Work Transition With Public Housing Residents: Applications of the Transtheoretical Model
• Finding Work in the City
• Transit Turning Inside Out: Federal Transportation Policy and Inner-City Accessibility During the ISTEA Years
• The Geography of Opportunity and Vulnerability: State TANF Policy, Welfare Dependency, and the Diversity of Welfare Caseloads
• The Role of Labor Market Intermediaries in Promoting Employment Access and Mobility: A Supply- and Demand-Side Approach
• Geographic Perspectives on Ethnic Labor Market Segmentation in the United States
• Multi-Worker Households Residential Location Choices--A Disaggregate Comparative Approach
• Off to the (Labor) Market: Women, Work, and Welfare Reform in 21st Century American Cities