Professor Sir Peter Hall, Senior Research Fellow at the Young Foundation and Professor of Planning at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College is a geographer-planner. He is the author or editor of over thirty books on urban and regional planning and related topics, most recently Working Capital (with N. Buck et al, 2002). From 1991-94 he was Special Adviser on Strategic Planning to the Secretary of State for the Environment, with special reference to issues of London and South East regional planning including the East Thames Corridor (Thames Gateway) and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. In 1998-99 he was a member of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Urban Task Force, which reported in June 1999.

He received his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge and has taught at the London School of Economics; at the University of Reading (1968-88), where he was Dean of the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies; and at the University of California at Berkeley (1980-92), where he is Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning.

He has received the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for distinction in research, and is an Honorary member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europea. He holds nine honorary doctorates from universities in the UK, Sweden and Canada. He was knighted in 1998 for services to the Town and Country Planning Association. He was a founder-member of the Regional Studies Association and first editor of its journal Regional Studies (1967-78). He was Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association (1995-9) and is a member of its Board of Trustees. He is joint editor of the journal Built Environment.

He has been a member of many British official committees including the Social Science Research Council (1974-79), the South East Regional Planning Council (1965-79), the Environmental Board (1975-79) and the Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (1977-79). In the United States he has given testimony to committees of Congress and of the California Legislature on the concept of the Enterprise Zone. From 1992 to 1994 he was Chairman of the Research Committee on the Urban Underclass, commissioned by the Social Science Research Council. He was a member of the Committee on the Future of the Automobile, convened by the American Academy of Sciences, which reported in 1993. He is convenor of the World Commission on 21st-Century Urbanization (Urban 21), and co-editor of its report, which was the subject of a major conference in Berlin in July 2000.

He has extensive research experience. His current main work is as co-principal investigator on the ESRC Cities Programme’s London Integrated City Study (1998-2001). His extensive consultancy experience includes: expert adviser to the Government of South Australia for the Strategic Review for Metropolitan Adelaide (1990-92); adviser to the London and Continental Railway Company on the high-speed rail link from London to the Channel Tunnel (1994-5); membership of the Arup group on London’s Competitiveness in the UK Economy, for GOL (1994-5); direction of the Bartlett/UCL study of Four World Cities for GOL (1995-6); report on a Socio-Economic Assessment of London for the Association of London Government (1997) and report on London’s Spatial Economy: The Dynamics of Change for the London Development Partnership (1999).

Peter Hall is author or editor of over thirty books on urban and regional planning and related topics, including:

• London 2000 (1963, 1969)
• The World Cities (1966, 1977, 1983)
• Planning and Urban Growth: An Anglo-American Comparison (with M. Clawson) (1973)
• Urban and Regional Planning (1975, 1982)
• Europe 2000 (ed., 1977)
• Great Planning Disasters (1980)
• Growth Centres in the European Urban System (with D. Hay) (1980)
• The Inner City in Context (ed., 1981)
• Silicon Landscapes (with A. Markusen, 1985)
• Can Rail save the City? (with C. Hass-Klau, 1985)
• High-Tech America (with A. Markusen and A. Glasmeier, 1986)
• The Carrier Wave (with P. Preston, 1988)
• Cities of Tomorrow (1988); London 2001 (1989)
• The Rise of the Gunbelt (with A. Markusen, S. Campbell and S. Deitrick, 1991)
• Technopoles of the World (with M. Castells; 1994)
• Sociable Cities (with C. Ward, 1998); Cities in Civilization (1998)
• and Urban Future 21 (with U. Pfeiffer, 2000).