Arnab Chakraborty

Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
PhD, University of Maryland-College Park, 2007

Arnab Chakraborty is interested in factors that lead to a more efficient, equitable and sustainable urban structure, with a focus on spatial allocation of public resources, regulation of land uses, and regional variations in politics of planning. He is involved in action-oriented research that brings together representative stakeholders including business, civic and elected officials to create more effective and sustainable growth policies. He has also developed participatory and analytical tools to facilitate scenario planning processes at a regional scale that are also useful to local and state governments in quantifying land use, transportation and environmental impacts of development and development policies. His work constantly searches for more accurate ways to represent past and projected growth trends and better measures of estimating impacts. He has played a leading role in multiple regional planning exercises, most notably in Washington metropolitan area and the state of Maryland. Professor Chakraborty's recent research investigates whether there is a conceptual foundation for States to plan. To that end, his other research activities involve integrated land use and transportation modeling at the state level and evaluation of so called "smart growth" policies across states and seek to identify what make certain policies or places more successful.

Professor Chakraborty teaches Communication for Planners (UP 312), Plan Making (UP 510) and Growth Management and Regional Planning (UP 547). In the past, he has taught Microeconomics of Public Policy and Planning, Geographic Information Systems, Land Use Policy and Scenario Planning.

His doctoral specializations are in land use planning and urban economics. He also holds a Master’s degree in urban planning and policy from University of Illinois, Chicago and a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is an affiliate at the National Center for Smart Growth and, in the past, has worked as an architect in India, and for the Chicago Transit Authority, taught at the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy-sponsored specialization courses at Erasmus University (The Netherlands) and Peking University (China).

Contact Information
Room M230
Temple Buell Hall
611 Taft Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: 217.244.8728
Fax: 217.244.1717
E-mail: arnab AT illinois DOT edu

Current Research Areas

Primary research interests are in the areas of analysis of alternative development scenarios, impacts of land use policy, models of stakeholder involvement in regional planning processes and quantitative measures of urban form. Other interests include local government policies that influence land use, especially zoning; land resource management using GIS and planning for rural development.

Selected ongoing projects include: md-LEAM, and Maryland Scenario Project

For details on Prof. Chakraborty's work, please click here.

Selected Publications

Chakraborty, A., "An Experiment in Statewide Scenario Analysis: Towards an Even Smarter Growth for Maryland", Under Review, Journal of American Planning Association, (2008)

Bento, A., Lowe, S., Knaap, G., and Chakraborty, A., “Housing Marker Impacts of Inclusionary Zoning”, Forthcoming, Cityscape Journal (2009)

Carrell, J. and Chakraborty, A., "Equity in Access to Parks and Park Funding: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Portland, OR", Under Review, Journal of Urbanism (2008)

Chakraborty, A., Knaap, G., Nguyen, D., and Shin, J. H., "The Effects of High Density Zoning on Multifamily Housing Construction in the Suburbs of Six U.S. Metropolitan Areas", Forthcoming, Urban Studies (2008)

Knaap, G., Chakraborty, A., "Comprehensive Planning for Sustainable Rural Development", Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Special Issue on Rural Development Policy, (2007) 37:1

Shiffer, M., Chakraborty, A., McNeil, S., Srinivasan, S., Donahue, B., Garfield, G., "A Spatial Multimedia Representation of the Chicago Transit Authority's Rail Infrastructure", Transportation Research Record 1838, pp 1-10, 2003

Please note: I am looking for motivated PhD students. If you considering applying for a PhD or you are a UIUC graduate student looking for an advisor and are interested in research on smart growth, local government policy, sustainability, GIS or modeling land use change, send me an email with your CV.

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