He published an important study in the 1950s about land use and vehicular traffic patterns and served on the New York City Planning Commission from 1969 to 1977.
He attended public schools[3] and received his undergraduate degree from City College in 1939[1] and a doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1953.
[4][5] In 1965 and 1966, he was staff director of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Presidential Task Force on Urban Problems,[3] which proposed the federally financed Model Cities Program.
[2] Beginning in 1964, he served as a visiting professor numerous times at Israel's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, where he was instrumental in the country's urban renewal programs.
It led to commissions for more than 100 reports for cities including New York, Boston, and Honolulu[1] as well as projects in Korea, China, Australia and Israel.
"[9] In 2015 mixologist Jeremy Oertel created a mixed drink called the Chester Rapkin for the Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan.