Profile

Biography

Professor Hall received his Master's (1957) and Ph.D. (1959) degrees in Geography 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 40 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, 2002); 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); Urban Future 21 (with U. Pfeiffer, 2000; Working Capital (with N. Buck et al, 2002); The Polycentric Metropolis (with K. Pain, 2006); and London Voices London Lives (2007).

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 and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.  He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europea.  He holds fourteen honorary doctorates from universities in the UK, Sweden and Canada.  He was knighted in 1998 for services to the Town and Country Planning Association, and in 2003 was named by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a “Pioneer in the Life of the Nation” at a reception in Buckingham Palace.  In 2003 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Town Planning Institute, the first to be awarded for twenty years.  In 2005 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Deputy Prime Minister for his contributions to urban regeneration and planning.  He received the 2005 Balzan Prize for work on the Social and Cultural History of Cities since the Beginning of the 16th Century.  In 2008 he received the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize of the International Union of Architects.

Research Summary

Professor Hall has a special interest in the application of research to planning and regeneration policy, especially the relationshiop between transport development and urban and regional change.  He writes regularly on this and other topics for the magazines Town and Country Planning and Planning.

Research outputs

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Research activities