The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announces that Dr. Rachel Weber has been appointed Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, effective July 1, 2025. Weber is an urban planner, political economist, and economic geographer who researches the relationship between finance and the built environment. Her work examines how the engagement of municipal governments with financial markets affects how cities borrow, spend, and develop.
Weber joined the GSD as professor of Urban Planning in January 2025, and she succeeds Ann Forsyth, Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor of Urban Planning, who was appointed Chair in 2023.
“I could not be more excited about Rachel’s appointment and for the future of urban planning and design at the GSD,” says Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture. “Rachel’s research into the relationship between finance and the built environment has had an impact both within the discipline of urban planning and outside academia, influencing the creation of new public policy at all levels of government. I am also very grateful to Ann Forsyth for her leadership of the department over the past two years.”
Weber is the author of more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters and published reports. Her latest book, From Boom to Bubble: How Finance Built the New Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2015), won the Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning (2012), a compilation of 40 essays by leading urban scholars.
“Planners, designers, and developers confront urban problems in increasingly complex and polarized environments,” Weber says. “The Department of Urban Planning and Design equips our graduates for the technical and ethical challenges of building shared spatial futures. Across the GSD, faculty, staff, and students bring world-class levels of knowledge, experience, and passion to their work. I am honored to join this esteemed community of scholar-practitioners and eager to help advance our collective endeavors.”
In addition to her academic roles, Weber has served as an advisor to planning agencies and community organizations on issues related to property taxes, project finance, capital planning, and economic development. She was appointed to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Urban Policy Committee in 2008, and by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force in 2011.
Weber joined the GSD from the University of Illinois at Chicago where, since 1998, she taught and conducted research in the fields of economic development, real estate, city politics, and public finance. Her current research project spotlights the predictive knowledge practices that allow real estate investors to create and extract value from the built environment, often to the detriment of communities. Titled “The Urban Oracular: Speculating on the Future City,” this work builds on her previous insight that those involved in urban development too often are overconfident in their forecasts about supply and demand. Focusing on the period from the Global Financial Crisis through the Covid-19 pandemic, Weber is examining the role of ever more sophisticated models, algorithms, and data sources that enable investors to convert the future into capital.
Weber has been cited and quoted extensively in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Economist, Crain’s, the Chicago Tribune, and other news outlets. She holds a master’s and PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and an undergraduate degree in Development Studies from Brown University.