Chester Hartman, an urban planner and author, was Director of Research for the Poverty & Race Research Action Council in Washington, DC, and Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Sociology, George Washington University. Prior to that, he was a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning from Harvard and was faculty there as well as at Yale, the University of North Carolina, Cornell, the University of California-Berkeley, American University and Columbia University. His articles appeared in The Nation, Social Work, Virginia Law Review, Journal of the American Planning Association, University of Wisconsin Law Review,
The Utne Reader, The Village Voice, Mother Jones and numerous other academic and popular journals and newspapers.
Chester was the founder and former Chair of the Planners Network, a national organization of progressive urban and rural planners and community organizers. He served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Negro Education, Journal of Urban Affairs, Housing Policy Debate, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Housing Studies and is a former Board member/Secretary of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
He was a consultant to numerous public and private agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Stanford Research Institute, Arthur D. Little, California Rural Legal Assistance, the Urban Coalition, the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the Legal Aid Society of New York.
Chester passed away in 2023.