Francis Stuart Chapin Jr. was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He received a B.A. from the University of Minnesota and two degrees in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the 1940s he worked as a community and regional planner with the Tennessee Valley Authority, and served as the planning director for Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1949, he became a professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina. He started a working group there called the Urban Studies Committee, which in 1963 became the Center for Urban and Regional Studies. In 1965 he became a member of President Lyndon Johnson’s Task Force on Cities. In 1969, he retired from being Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies to become Research Director. In 1978, he retired from the university. In 1986, he received the Distinguished Educator Award from the American Institute of Certified Planners. In 1999, he was inducted into the AICP College of Fellows. He currently lives in White Salmon, Washington, and works to preserve the Columbia River Gorge.