Peter Hall is Professor of Planning at The Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College London. 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 and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. He is a member of the Deputy Prime Minister's Urban Task Force, established in May 1998.

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 is author or editor of nearly 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); and Technopoles of the World (with M. Castells; 1994). His latest book Cities in Civilization will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1998.

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.

He was a founder-member of the Regional Studies Association and first editor of its journal Regional Studies (1967-78). He is currently Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association.

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.

His extensive consultancy experience includes membership of the teams 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); and direction of the Bartlett/UCL study of Four World Cities for GOL (1995-6).