Eminent Professor of Planning to visit Malta

Sir Peter Hall, Professor of Planning at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College London and Director of the Institute of Community Studies will visit Malta next week. He will have talks with Government on the regeneration of Valletta, Floriana and Cottonera and other planning issues and deliver a public lecture on "Planning at the Crossroads: Anglo-Maltese Reflections" at the Mikiel Anton Vassalli Lecture Centre, Gateway Building, University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq.

Sir Peter Hall received his Master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge, and has taught at the London School of Economics and 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.

A recipient of the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for distinction in research, Sir Peter Hall is an Honorary member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europea. A holder of 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.

Author or editor of over 30 books on urban and regional planning and related topics, Sir Peter Hall was a founder-member of the Regional Studies Association and first editor of its journal Regional Studies (1967-78), 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.

Sir Hall has been a member of many British official committees. From 1991 to 1994 he was Special Adviser on Strategic Planning to the Secretary of State for the Environment and in 1998-99 he was a member of the UK Deputy Prime Minister's Urban Task Force, which reported in June 1999. The task force identified causes of urban decline in England and recommended practical solutions to bring people back into cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods.

In the United States Sir Peter Hall has given testimony to committees of Congress and of the California Legislature on the concept of the Enterprise Zone. He is convenor of the World Commission on 21^st Century Urbanization (Urban 21), and co-editor of its report, the subject of a major conference in Berlin in 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).