Cities in systems of cities: Adelaide, Australia and the world

A lecture by Professor Sir Peter Hall, University College London

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Audio transcript available here

Jointly presented by the Centre for Building and Planning Studies and the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, UniSA

The concept that "cities are systems within systems of cities" was coined by the American geographer Brian J.L. Berry in 1964. Despite huge advances in the way that urbanists view cities, it still has huge relevance for urban policy today. The outstanding features of the contemporary world are global-scale competition between urban economies, in which city administrations and private sector leaders seek to develop specialised niches in a globalised economy, and the growth of the so-called knowledge economy, based on advanced services, which have largely replaced manufacturing and goods-handling in the cities of the developed world. Together these mean that the factors for urban success are now different from those that obtained in the 1960s. Quality of urban life becomes a new and significant factor in attracting a "creative class" - but the question becomes: exactly what quality is most significant?

Celebrating 60 years of planning education (1949 - 2009)

Welcome from Professor Stephen Hamnett, Centre for Building and Planning Studies, UniSA

As many of you will know, 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the first formal program of planning education in Australia which commenced at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries, an antecedent institution of the University of South Australia, on 14 February 1949.

To celebrate this significant anniversary, the School of Natural and Built Environments has organized a program of important public lectures and symposia during 2009, at which a number of distinguished scholars in the field of urban and regional planning have been invited to speak.

And there is none more distinguished than tonight's speaker, Professor Sir Peter Hall. Peter has been a major influence internationally for many years as a planner, geographer, educator, policy adviser, historian and prolific author of some 35 books including several which have acquired the status of classics - Introduction to Urban and Regional Planning, World Cities, Technopoles of the World, Cities of Tomorrow and Cities in Civilization to name only a few.

Peter was Special Adviser on Strategic Planning to the UK Secretary of State for the Environment in the early 1990, with special reference to regional planning for London and South East England. He also knows Adelaide well, having been an adviser to the Bannon government's 'Planning Review' between 1990 and 1992.

Peter Hall received the Gold Medal of the Royal Town Planning Institute in 2003, the Balzan International Prize in 2005 and the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize of the International Union of Architects in 2008.

Sir Patrick Abercrombie was a distinguished British planner who was instrumental in the establishment of the first planning program in Australia. He visited Adelaide in 1948 and encouraged the then School of Mines and Industries to set up a suitable course of training for planners. Abercrombie was Professor of Town Planning in the Bartlett School at University College London from 1935 to 1946 and it is very appropriate, therefore, for Peter Hall, as Professor of Planning and Regeneration at the Bartlett School at UCL, to address this 60th anniversary event.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Professor Sir Peter Hall to deliver his lecture on: Cities in systems of cities: Adelaide, Australia and the world.

Biography:

Peter Hall is Professor of Planning and Regeneration at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College London and President of the Town and Country Planning Association.

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 Thames Gateway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Peter Hall was also an adviser to the Bannon Government's 'Planning Review' in South Australia between 1990 and 1992. In 1998-99 he was a member of the Deputy Prime Minister's Urban Task Force. From 2004 to 2008 he was Chair of ReBlackpool, the Blackpool Urban Regeneration Company.

He is author, co-author or editor of over 35 books on urban and regional planning and related topics - most recently, London Voices London Lives, published in 2007. He is also the author of Cities in Civilization: Culture, Technology, and Urban Order (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998).

Peter Hall received the Gold Medal of the Royal Town Planning Institute in 2003, the Balzan International Prize in 2005 and the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize of the International Union of Architects in 2008.