Professor Daniel Chatman on the Past, Present, and Future of Transportation

UC Berkeley's Daniel Chatman talks the inextricable link between housing and transportation, planning for the actual needs of people, and the future of autonomy.

It’s no secret UC Berkeley boasts one of the United States’ most prestigious planning programs. Regularly ranked among the top five (for whatever that’s worth) Berkeley students not only receive a world-class, and public, planning education (with a serious lean toward environmental goals, being that it’s taught from within the College of Environmental Design), but many Berkeley alum go on to teach at other planning programs, including my own alma matter, Penn’s Weitzman School of Design. Both my transportation advisors (Erick Guerra and Megan S. Ryerson) graduated from PhD programs and migrated east to teach—not to mention did PennPlanning’s former Chair, John Landis (not that one).

It’s no wonder why so much talent comes from Penn West, really, when students get to learn from people like Daniel Chatman, who for the last 12 years has been teaching and publishing original research at the intersection of housing and transportation. I’ll often allude to this connection here, but Profess…