Peter Hall - Ingenta Connect

PROFESSOR SIR PETER HALL: ROLE MODEL

Peter Hall: Inspirer and Innovator of Railways and Regions CHIA-LIN CHEN

This paper draws on my personal experiences and observations of Professor Sir Peter Hall to illustrate Peter’s contribution to and concerns about issues that were less welldocumented elsewhere. This paper, which has five parts, is mainly concerned with the past six years, which I spent as a PhD student and later as a colleague of Peter’s until his death. The first analyses Peter’s influence on my PhD research on the impacts of high-speed rail investment. The second demonstrates how Peter disseminated and engaged research findings in HSR policy-making through media coverage, wide professional and political networks, and in cooperation with local actors. Section three describes Peter’s continuing commitment to addressing widening regional inequality in the case of Blackpool, initially as a chairman of the ReBlackpool Urban Regeneration Company and later as the leader of the EU SINTROPHER project. In section four, I show how, apart from his optimism, foresight, and enthusiasm in cities, his working philosophy and his view of the key elements which characterize a planner make him a role model for younger academics to look up to. In the final section I discuss his influence on my future development.

Six years ago, I was lucky enough to start working with Professor Sir Peter Hall – one of the most influential planners in modern Britain. He was a highly esteemed scholar and planner, globally renowned for his work, but despite this he was amazingly approachable. While under his supervision, we worked closely looking at the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) on cities and regions, and later I was appointed as a research associate to work under his leadership for the EU Interreg IVB SINTROPHER Project – his uncompleted project addressing the connectivity of five peripheral regions in North West Europe. The whole experience gave me the opportunity to observe and learn from him. Although Peter’s considerable contribution to research on world cities, technopoles, enterprise zones, garden cities, and new towns etc. has been well appreciated and discussed, his concern for regional inequality as well as his 112

commitment to regeneration strategies for vulnerable cities is less well documented. Therefore, this paper draws on my personal observations and experiences to illustrate a wider and more holistic representation of Peter’s numerous contributions and interventions. There are five parts: the first part looks at the aspects of Peter’s comprehensive thinking that have influenced my research; section two focuses on how Peter influenced HSR policy in the UK, specifically as a means to exploit HSR’s potential for wider regional benefits. Section three illustrates Peter’s persistent commitment to Blackpool’s regeneration, while section four describes Peter’s personal characteristics, his working philosophy and the key characteristics necessary for being a planner; these in themselves deserve to be highly respected. Finally, his influence on my future development is discussed in the conclusion. BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

PETER HALL: INSPIRER AND INNOVATOR OF RAILWAYS AND REGIONS

Figure 1. Peter Hall at his 80th birthday party at the Bartlett in March 2012. (Photo: Chia-Lin Chen)

How did Peter Influence My Research? Prior to my PhD research on high-speed rail, with an educational background in architecture, I was employed in a local government planning department in Taiwan working on a number of urban design projects, including one around a HSR station. Initially, I was approaching the impacts emanating from HSR from a local perspective (station area development), puzzling over the contrasting situation that some HSR stations were more popular than others in attracting development projects to their surrounding areas. In the wider context, the precise impacts of HSR on urban development were debatable, in particular, while agglomeration economies BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

concentrated in large cities, uneven development has largely widened differences both between and within regions. There has been a persistent debate regarding whether or not regional inequality can be reduced or widened by HSR. This controversy helped to determine my key research questions – namely, whether, to what extent and how HSR can reduce regional inequality. It was Peter’s comprehensive thinking of integrating transport and territorial development at multiple levels and with a long-term perspective that critically shaped my PhD research design in four aspects. Firstly, in the spatial aspect, my understanding of HSR impacts evolved from a local (station area) focus to a much broader 113


and strategic focus. A major inspiration has been Peter’s innovative and systematic interpretation of Colin Clark’s famous 1958 paper: ‘Transport: maker and breaker of cities’. Clark was writing against a background of increasing road transport and poor rail services. At the time – Britain’s first motorway section arrived in Preston in 1958 – the notion of industrial development was still very much cost-driven and about goods handling. In the road transport age, Clark witnessed the location of manufacturers and traders being set free, resulting in rail, with low marginal costs and high terminal costs, finding its niche in journeys of more than 200 miles (322 km) with road being favoured for short journeys. Since Britain is a small country where most journeys are below 200 miles and a statistical survey conducted in 1954 showed that three-quarters of national ton-mileage figure was carried by road, his claim that ‘It seems safe to predicted that road transport will go on improving further’ (Clark, 1958, p. 246) seemed reasonable. However, Clark was aware of the phenomenon of suburbanization resulting from the decentralization of jobs and homes and decline in city centres, which, he argued, took place before the arrival of the road age, for example when the electric tram chiselled the compact Victorian cities apart. He questioned a limit to suburbanization and suggested a planning solution, urging a manageable size of city (150,000 as the objective) by grouping communities where residents did not need to travel too far for work. Unlike Clark’s context prior to a postindustrial era and the second railway age, in the 1990s, Peter witnessed something different – a two-way movement, i.e. the increasing agglomeration economies (recentralization) of high-value added activities in large city centres and decentralization of routine activities. This had resulted from mixed forces such as economic restructuring towards knowledge economies, urban regeneration policies, technological breakthrough and transport invest114

ment in rail-based urban transport systems, addressing severe congestion and gridlock for a sustainable agenda etc. Therefore, Peter invested a new meaning in Clark’s aphorism to argue that it could be significant in two ways, through external and internal links. First, through opening up new flows of people, goods and information at national and international scales, thus affecting the fortunes of different cities. Secondly, through affecting accessibility within cities. (Hall, 1995)

This distinction affirmed that the arrival of high-speed rail was set within the context of dynamic metropolitan urban forms emanating from new technologies and drastic economic change. A key publication to come out of Peter’s EU INTERREG IIIB project, The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from MegaCity Regions in Europe (Hall and Pain, 2006), demonstrated the degree of decentralization and concentration that occurred in enlarging polycentric mega-city regions. I gradually realized that only through hard knowledge of location theories, fundamental forces and trends with new opportunities and challenges for cities and regions, could we further pose the next question: how transport technology such as high-speed rail will impact the future of cities. For instance, excessive car use leading to consequent urban sprawl and a decline in many city centres has triggered an urban renaissance as a result of various urban redevelopment strategies and a revival in public transport, in particular rail-based modes such as the light rail, tram and metro. Meanwhile, high-speed rail has its comparative advantage over air travel for medium-haul inter-city travel. An HSR station’s location (city centre or out of city centre) could be critical in a more strategic sense concerning how it can be best placed to serve inter-city travel as well as to integrate with intra-regional network enabling wider benefits to more accessible hinterlands. With this in mind, I decided to measure HSR impacts from both inter-regional and intraregional levels. Secondly, Peter’s belief in and passion for BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1


high-speed rail were closely associated with a historical perspective of the impact of new technology on the future of cities from the 1980s; this was heavily rooted in his wide reading and in-depth research over a period of 14 years where he explored new thinking about cities and technologies (Brotchie et al., 1985, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999). This longterm perspective influenced my selection when considering whether I should choose Taiwanese or European HSR cases to study. Weighing up the key consideration that HSR in Taiwan was too new (then, only one year old) to allow for a sufficient time to measure regional inequality, the decision was made to study British and French HSR experiences which had developed over more than 30 years. In addition, because of a lack of empirical studies on this aspect, it also persuaded me to conduct empirical studies rather than conduct a study based on prediction and modelling. One might argue that Peter’s attitude towards rail in general had not been consistent. There was evidence showing that he undertook a rail-to-road conversion study entitled ‘Better Use of Railways’ in 1975 (Gourvish, 2004, p. 587) and later advocated the idea of rail-to-road conversion again in a paper published in 1982 by the Centre for Policy Studies (Gourvish, 2004, p. 202). As Gourvish (2004) pointed out, this idea of converting railways into roads had been advocated from the 1950s when British rail infrastructure had been gradually becoming obsolete and the rail tracks were abundant –‘unusually dense’, as Clark (1958) described, before the famous Beeching Report, The Reshaping of British Railways came into effect in 1963 (Beeching, 1963). Peter’s attitude to transport along with other aspects of planning subjects had been profoundly changed by a few significant events which took place in the 1970s. In the two-day symposium on Peter’s most influential books on 25 and 26 June 2012, he openly admitted influential events such as huge reactions to the London motorways and conservation battle in Covent Garden. Peter BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

illustrated how he felt about these events in a speech he gave when he first joined in UCL in 1992. … to me the 1970s are somehow a non-decade. It isn’t that I personally got off the world: I was never busier, with the Deanship at the University of Reading, membership of the Social Science Research Council and a dozen other responsibilities here and in Europe. It was just that everything that my generation had tried to achieve seemed to be totally unravelling. There was a sudden, explosive reaction against the style of large-scale, social-scientifically based planning of the 1960s, exemplified by the abandonment of the London motorways, the dithering over the third London airport, the Covent Garden row, the constant recycling over London Docklands, and a dozen other similar events. There was the Marxist ascendancy in the universities, as strongly felt in urban and planning studies as anywhere else, not least in the Centre for Environmental Studies of which I was by then a Governor. And there were the huge periods of unrest, the two winters of discontent, with everything falling apart and the whiff of revolution, whether from the extreme left or the extreme right, in the air. It was a uniquely depressing, nerve-wracked period; although doubtless, not everybody will remember it that way. (Hall, 1996, p. 6)

These events totally inversed the underlying perspective of central planning in his book London 2000. As a result, small/experimental planning and sensitive conservation are good; while comprehensive renewal and big scales are bad. Peter argued that these changes have been permanent. Regarding his attitude towards transport, Peter acknowledged the influence of German scholar Carmen Hass-Klau. Carmen had been one of his Master’s and then PhD students. He said: My attitude towards transport did fundamentally change too over those years… I think the influence here should be acknowledged… Carmen and I, I think, had never stopped fighting from the first class I had ever taken with her to the next time I met her. She did have some quite fundamental influences on my thinking, demonstrating to me the value of positive public transport investment in especially German and other continental cities that did make the shift evidently in [my book] London 2001 [if compared with London 2000 first published in 1963]. (Symposium, 26 June 2012) 115


Thirdly, Peter’s emphasis on technological evolution and his belief in its ability to act as a conduit for transformation critically influenced the definition of my research case studies, ‘… though 99 per cent of things that happen in this world don’t matter very much at all, this is the remaining one per cent that very much do…’ (Hall, 1996). On the one hand, the term ‘the second railway age’ (Banister and Hall, 1993) reflected the idea that the arrival of high-speed rail in the 1960s represented a milestone in transport technology breakthroughs – namely a dedicated high-speed line added to the existing first-generation railway founded in the 1830s. However, the adaptation of this dedicated HSR varies with different national approaches and particular geographies. Consequently, there are two major kinds of HSR system: new dedicated lines and upgraded lines. According to the European Union definition, (CEC Directive 96/48, 1996), new dedicated HSR lines are operated at a speed of at least 250 km/h while the speed on upgraded HSR lines is 200 km/h. The UK provides a classic example of the adoption of an upgraded HSR approach. In the late 1960s when the rail industry was struggling with obsolete infrastructure and a serious financial deficit, it was widely recognized that there was a need for rail modernization, but building new lines on top of the abundant old tracks was not feasible. Two British HST technological approaches were therefore developed: the Advanced Passenger Train (APT-electronic tilting train) project and the High-Speed Train, a faster and cheaper interim approach using diesel traction (later named InterCity 125). Both technological experiments began with key mainlines: the APT on the busiest and longest West Coast Main lines (WCML – 642 km (401 miles)) and the High-Speed Train on Greater Western Main Line (GWML) designed by the far-seeing engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1830s. Although the tilting train technology later proved to viable in Sweden and Italy, the APT was abandoned in the UK 116

in 1982 before entering service (Barnett, 1992). This resulted in the pioneering IC125 service on the GWML as a lasting success and the postponement of high-speed service on the WCML until December 2008 (Chen and Hall, 2011). While the UK upgraded HSR model had been largely ignored and not recognized as a type of HSR, the selection of the British InterCity 125/225 as a case for study for interregional impacts proved a good choice as no empirical research had been conducted on the issue. This research acted as a baseline which helped understanding the change in British economic geography brought about by this upgraded version of HSR while a new dedicated system HS2 is being planned. On the other hand, whether HSR, either upgraded or newly dedicated, was regarded as an opportunity or a problem does make a difference to the overall effects. The contrast between British ‘cheap and cheerful solutions’ and French grands projets d’aménagement approach to HSR investment led me to pursue a comparative study on intra-regional impacts of HSR, with parallel case studies of Lille/Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Manchester/North West England. Fourthly, although Peter firmly believed that technological innovation was a key driver underlying urban transformation, he was fully aware that technology on its own was insufficient. ‘The precise effects on cities depends, in many cases, on “entrepreneurial adaptation”’ (Hall, 1995, p. 6). My decision to pursue a comparative study between British and French contexts was strongly influenced by the different reactions – without and with entrepreneurial adaptation – to the arrival of the Channel Tunnel in developing a modern high-speed rail network. On the French side, as soon as the Channel Tunnel Treaty was signed, a national decision to build the TGVNord between Paris and Channel Tunnel through northern France was announced, although the route via Lille City Centre had not been finalized. The TGV-Nord running between Lille Flandres and Paris Gare BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1


du Nord came into operation in 1993 one year before the Channel Tunnel opened. In contrast, on the British side, a saga ensued looking for an alternative route for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), which resulted in phase one of ‘CTRL’ opening in 2003 and the final stage in 2007. A famous tease from the French President François Mitterrand one year before the opening of the Channel Tunnel highlights Britain’s then technological backwardness in developing the new high-speed line. Mitterrand said that ‘Passengers will race at a great pace across the plains of Northern France, rush through the Tunnel on a fast track, and then be able to daydream at very low speed, admiring the English countryside’ (Adonis, 2009). These factors indicated that an institutional

capacity for planning intervention is critical in order to exploit the opportunity and to prepare and plan for it. At the same time, there is a need for empirical evidence to show how the HSR opportunity could fulfil its full potential. As a consequence, this comparative research adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the key factors in the development process in the long term. How did Peter influence HSR Policy in order to Exploit the Potential of HSR? Throughout Peter’s distinguished academic career, he was actively involved in actual planning practice. Added to this, his contribution to HSR development in the UK and USA in the 1990s has been widely recognized.

Figure 2. Peter receiving a gift from Nick Gallent, Head of Bartlett School of Planning, on his 80th birthday in March 2012. (Photo: Chia-Lin Chen) BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

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When I started my PhD in April 2008, the HS2 initiative was underway although the White Paper on HSR was not published until 2010. Peter demonstrated his prominent role in influencing HSR policy in the UK in order to exploit the potential of HSR to enhance territorial development. Through my close observation and involvement, I noted three aspects in particular which I outline below. Firstly, an anecdote illustrates Peter’s proficiency with the media. He could sense ad hoc events and synthesize them, and then knew how to create a wider impact through media coverage. Just a day before our first joint paper for the Royal Geographical Society conference in August 2009, Network Rail published a provisional high-speed rail plan stating their expectation that Manchester would be an one hour from London via rail. By that evening, Peter had emailed two points of summarized research findings to the

Guardian journalist covering the conference. Peter wrote: … so the intriguing possibility is that in the next twenty years, Manchester becomes a commuter suburb of the capital … the presentation could excite some interest. Feel free to send someone along! (Email, 26 August 2009)

Secondly, as our two joint papers dealing with the inter- and intra-regional impacts of HSR were completed during the development of HSR policy in the UK, Peter shared them with senior government officers, professional institutions, HS2 Limited, the Independent Transport Commission etc. thus ensuring that our research reached the corridors of power. I was copied into numerous emails and witnessed how research could become involved in public debate and contribute to policy-making. In general, our first contribution to the HS2 debate began with a key empirical

Figure 3. Peter Hall and Chia-Lin Chen presented their joint paper at the 50th European Regional Science Association Annual Conference in August 2010 in Jönköping. (Photo: Mei-Chun Chen) 118

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paper examining the impact of high-speed rail based on the British InterCity 125/225 services at the inter-regional scale (Chen and Hall, 2011). In that paper, we concluded that HSR could have two major effects although they were not automatic or universal: first, bringing a much bigger area within a onehour commute of London thereby creating new commuter towns and economic subcentres; second, bringing more cities within a two-hour journey of London, which (as we demonstrate) serves to boost their economies. A follow-up study on the intraregional impacts of HSR, looking at the parallel case studies of Lille/Nord-Pas-deCalais and Manchester/North West England was then conducted (Chen and Hall, 2012). Our findings showed that regional inequality in the British context widened, whereas in the French case it lessened. With a close examination of the development process, we argued that the improvement to intraregional connectivity, e.g. the integration

with HSR hubs is one of key interventions to spread benefits to a wider regional territory. Thirdly, alongside HS2, Peter emphasized the importance of intra-regional and interurban connectivity so the benefits of HS2 could be enjoyed by a broad range of people in different regions. Thus his involvement in HS2 was not limited solely to the national level but also embraced the local level. Peter had demonstrated that he was indeed an active campaigner and visionary while maintaining his position as a practical planner in ensuring that the benefits of HS2 were enjoyed in much wider regions. A classic example was his involvement in planning intra-regional connectivity for North West England; firstly, in a spin-off EU project, SYNAPTIC, which attempted to improve the door-to-door journey, Peter developed a vision for the North West, known as 2030-SMap, which exploited HS2’s regional impact (see figure 4). He argued that the preparation should be made immediately and be ready

Figure 4. The SYNAPTIC vision for the North West. BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

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by 2030. Secondly, Peter invited local experts in the north to develop a feasible regional network to enhance the connectivity across core northern cities. Professor Ian Wray of Liverpool University, former Chief Planner in the North West Development Agency, cooperated with Peter on this – looking at how a wider regional network in the North could be created to connect with the HS2 network. Ian recalled their cooperation: I think Peter said he was interested in the issue by email and I went to UCL to discuss with him. We talked over a map in the UCL staff café. He asked me to set up seminar in Liverpool to discuss. David (Thrower) attended that seminar and took issue with Peter on several points. I was somewhat in awe and felt as though Paul McCartney had asked me to join his band. There was an amusing incident when Peter and David were discussing options for the HS2 route north of Preston, where the corridor is squeezed between the sea and the high ground in the Forest of Bowland. Peter said to David ‘I am the expert here; I was the little lad standing on the embankment, train spotting in the 1940s’… That shut David up! (Email, 6 October 2014)

Peter’s enthusiasm was not hindered by his health condition; instead, his persistence has been a key driver as he consistently pushed things forward. He wrote: Resting after a day in hospital yesterday that was supposed to knock me out but failed to do so, I woke up in the middle of the night with some further ideas embodied in the attached paper, which tries to take on board arguments you’ve made and to incorporate them into a narrative designed to win maximum political support, both from the big cities and from the smaller places that are feeling left out. (Email, 2014)

Peter’s joint article with local experts (David Thrower and Ian Wray) proposing the HighSpeed North system (Hall et al., 2014) was later embraced and backed up in a follow-up proposal for HS3 by central government as a useful tool to enhance connectivity across northern core cities. In addition, Peter’s capacity to conceive technical solutions was demonstrated by his proposed solution to the HS1–HS2 link problem. In March 2011, as part of the HS2 proposal, 120

local and central government were having difficulties in making the HS1–HS2 link feasible. After we had reconnoitred the tunnel route, he immediately reported to his colleague in the Town and Country Planning Association: Today I looked at the HS1–HS2 link issue. There appears to be a very simple solution that would resolve all TfL’s problems – almost a no-brainer, so I assume HS2 Company have identified it: a 75-metre viaduct carrying a single track parallel to the existing formation at Camden Road Junction (see attached). One semi-detached house is affected… (Email, 11 March 2011)

Peter’s Commitment to Blackpool Regeneration and the EU SINTROPHER Project Peter Hall was a man for all cities and regions: whether they were thriving or lagging, large or small, he expressed an interest in them. Although he gained an international reputation for his contributions to issues concerning larger cities, of equal importance to him, were the much more vulnerable places left behind in the course of economic restructuring and uneven development. As Peter highlighted, there is a permanent and basic dilemma for all politicians and planners: [to create] a society that is entrepreneurial and dynamic while at the same time providing a platform of equal opportunity and a safety net of services for the least fortunate. (Hall, 1992, p.37)

Blackpool is a classic example of a vulnerable place which was in dire need of support and regeneration. Blackpool was once a buoyant seaside resort town that attracted many working-class families. Understandably, Peter who was brought up in wartime Blackpool was concerned about the town’s decline. His commitment to Blackpool was summed up by transport expert David Bayliss, who also grew up in Blackpool and remains an associate member of the SINTROPHER team: Like me Peter could not forget the heady post war days when Blackpool was the world’s most BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1


visited seaside resort (and he received a first class education at Blackpool Grammar School) and I think that was an important factor in his perseverance. (Email, 7 October 2014)

This section will use three inter-related projects to illustrate how Peter dealt with Blackpool’s difficult situation and issues surrounding regeneration, namely ReBlackpool Urban Regeneration Company (URC), EU SINTROPHER project, and SINTROPHER PLUS. Firstly, Peter was the Chair of the urban regeneration company: ReBlackpool between 2004 and 2008. ReBlackpool was one of the URCs set up by the Labour government of the time to act as an ‘arm’s-length’ company to push urban regeneration projects in twenty-five different locations throughout England. A central idea of ReBlackpool was based on a Las Vegas style casino bid which would not only create hundreds of local jobs, but provide a catalyst for regeneration. Simultaneously, Peter was striving to get Blackpool reconnected to the West Coast Main Line because the direct service to London had been scrapped several years before.1 However, as the government’s Casino Advisory Panel opted to give the one and only licence to Manchester, hundreds of millions of pounds of inward private sector

investment and the possibility of direct rail services disappeared in an instant (Interview, 11 February 2011). As a chairman Peter was privy to the difficulties that ReBlackpool encountered. He recalled three major difficulties: first, there was a lack of political leadership. ‘I remember the leader of council saying: “…We have no plan B”. When the day came and we found out Plan A had gone, he had no plan at all. And that was a major crisis for Blackpool. I think ReBlackpool never recovered’ (Ibid.). Second, this was an extremely disadvantageous situation for Blackpool in terms of winning the trust of its residents for its possible revival: ‘We almost devoted all our activities to that supercasino and some associated schemes which also unfortunately didn’t get any money. ReBlackpool therefore ended up, after four years, with very little to show for itself which was extremely disappointing’ (Ibid.). Third, there was an ineffective relationship between local authorities and ReBlackpool: ‘I think we were probably too much, as we say, under the thumb of local authority. Although we appeared to be independent, in effect we weren’t. In day-to-day operations, we were very much doing what the local political leadership told us to do’ (Ibid.).

Figure 5. The Fylde (comprising three local authorities: Blackpool Borough Council, Fylde District Council, and Wyre District Council) and the South Fylde Line. (Source: amended from Steer Davies Gleave, 2012a, p. 4) BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

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Secondly, apart from ReBlackpool URC, Peter’s mind turned to other measures that might encourage regeneration. He became involved with SINTROPHER, a project funded to the tune of €23 million by EU Interreg IVB. This was a five-year (2009–2014) project with the aim of enhancing local and regional transport provision to, from and within five peripheral regions in North-West Europe. One of the key issues addressed in SINTROPHER was knowledge transfer regarding the different approaches to economic appraisal of regional and local tram-based transport systems. Initially, ReBlackpool was to be the lead partner for SINTROPHER while Peter was chairman of ReBlackpool, however as soon as Blackpool’s casino bid failed and Peter stepped down, the decision was made to transfer the lead role to UCL where Peter could remain as project director. David Bayliss recalled his observation of how the SINTROPHER project was taking shape: Peter recalled [those good old days] when there was a club train service along the South Fylde line (SFL) to and from Manchester for businessmen working in Manchester but living in Blackpool and the South Fylde. [This kind of close relationship in commuting has long been lost due to the poor transport provision. And he] saw the improvement of this line as a means for improving wider connectivity and providing a stimulus for the declining south shore area. At the same time he became aware of the tram–train development in Kassel and through his contacts learned about how that was working and saw this as an opportunity to link the modernized promenade tramway with the airport, the SFL and provide through services between the core of Blackpool and the south Fylde corridor and Preston and possibly beyond… Also at that time there were proposals for a major development at Lytham dock which could potentially be served by a revitalized SFL operation. At this time the government was starting its tram-train trial process and the possibility of the SFL being used for this was also a consideration. (Email exchange, 7 October 2014)

Improving the neglected SFL was one of the major issues addressed by the British partner in the SINTROPHER project. Along122

side the need for SFL improvement, it is worth noting that currently there is no link between Blackpool tramway and current two railway branches (North and South Flyde Lines) (see figure 5). Consultants Steer Davis Gleave and Mott Macdonald were commissioned to conduct feasibility studies of the Fylde Coast with DfT’s Transport Analysis Guidance (WebTAG) (SteerDaviesGleave, 2012a, 2012b). However, of the five option schemes, WebTAG appraisal approaches led to the favouring of a tram extension to the Gateway Blackpool North station, whereas other strategic schemes including tram–train options, which were intended to improve the long ignored transport provision between Blackpool South and Preston, were disadvantaged by the dominant cost benefit analysis. This disappointing result confirmed that the current economic orthodoxy dictated decision-making in transport investment and this approach could never adequately capture indirect long-term regional development effects as a result of synergy between improved local connection to HS2 hubs and the potential positive effects of urban regeneration. This exercise demonstrated that a dominant value-for-money doctrine in the conventional economic appraisal still prevails. Further, it reflects the uncertain future of deprived areas, especially regarding their possible adaptation to new challenges through the improvement of transportation. Thirdly, SINTROPHER identified an urgent need to develop alternatives if the preexisting systems could not address the situation. A €1.4 million extension to our SINTROPHER project for a year – SINTROPHER PLUS (until July 2015) – was awarded to further advance approaches to low-cost technology and to develop a new framework for transport appraisal in improving transport connectivity and urban regeneration. In parallel, Peter persistently tried new ideas as soon as any opportunity arose. In the last few months, four examples perfectly capture his energy and optimism. First is the BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1


Figure 6. Peter with a bottle of ‘SINTROPHER PLUS’ champagne to celebrate the project extension in April 2014. (Photo: Chia-Lin Chen)

2014 Wolfson Economic Prize for Gardencity proposals; Peter teamed up with Wulf Daseking, David Lock, Will Cousins, David Rudlin and John Walker to propose a Freiburgstyle project of social cities to exploit HS2 opportunities. This included, but was not limited to, a proposed garden city around Fylde, a neighbouring area of Blackpool. Although not shortlisted, the proposal was awarded as one of the four highly commended entries for the Wolfson Prize. Secondly, Peter had a vision whereby a series of seminars would be organized to debate the existing and highly inappropriate transport appraisal approaches. We submitted a seminar proposal to the UCL Small Grant Challenge Sustainable City and although it was not BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

officially awarded the funding by GCSC, we received funding from UCL Public Policy Department to run a smaller scale set of seminars. Thirdly, Peter proposed launching a student competition to develop creative ideas for a study area around Blackpool South Regeneration Corridor, preparing detailed notes about the exact site boundaries. All these ideas would supplement and assist the new appraisal approach developed in the SINTROPHER PLUS. As a team leader, Peter was very astute at identifying critical moments and new opportunities, and synthesizing current affairs to suggest possible ways forward. A recent example was a rare chance to attack the rigid neo-classical paradigm in transport 123


investment. Peter’s foresight sensed the critical momentum created by a combined effect of the movement led by Manchester university students for changing the economics syllabus root-and-branch (‘Post-Crash Economics’) as well as the growing inequality elaborated in the recent bestseller – Thomas Piketty’s (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He emailed the team saying, ‘It increasingly occurs to me that we could be on the verge of something very important – more so than we may think’ (Email, 6 May 2014). He noticed that Piketty’s approach was ‘out of an old European tradition that sought to marry economics with economic and social history, bypassing the English profession’s obsession with mathematics’ (Ibid.). These suggested, according to Peter, that ‘we could form a part of a radical attack on the neo-classical paradigm’ which underlies the current approaches to the economic appraisal of transport investment and is inadequate in addressing regeneration

benefits of transport investment in deprived areas. This issue has been identified in SINTROPHER and is now being researched in SINTROPHER PLUS. At the same time, he suggested it could help to: explain the division between different national approaches in transport appraisal – especially on the part of the French, who remained unaffected by what was happening on the other side of the Channel!... Does this sound even half-right, or completely off the wall? Do I need to calm down? At any rate, it might provide a topic for our first internal seminar. (Ibid.)

As ever, Peter’s insightful analysis and commitment together with his sincerity shone through. Peter’s Working Philosophy and Value System Peter’s contributions to academia, policy-making and planning practice are closely associated with his personal characteristics.

Figure 7. A happy reunion with PhD students in March 2013; from left to right: Jonathan Reades, Chia-Lin Chen, Basak Demires Ozkul. (Photo: Chia-Lin Chen) 124



Firstly, Peter was a master of multi-tasking and managing his time for the various tasks he undertook. A great example of this was when he suggested we continued our unfinished discussion on addressing reviewers’ comments on our joint paper by taking the London Underground together on his way to a meeting in Department for Transport. In Peter’s use of time, it is difficult to miss the similarities with one of his mentors, the economist John Maynard Keynes. An anecdote exists where Keynes is said to have given instructions to his secretary at the Cambridge Arts Theatre Trust of which he was the founder while also an academic economist, college bursar, financial speculator, and patron of the arts. Peter regularly recalled this as his favourite Keynes story: They would go together by taxi to Cambridge station and trot along the platform to the train, Keynes still dictating instructions. He would cease as the train pulled away, and returning along the platform the hapless acolyte would see Keynes in his seat, already at work on his next Manchester Guardian article or something else… (Hall, 1994, p. 15)

Secondly, Peter was a constant encouraging influence on all those around him. He once shared his ’95 per cent philosophy’ with me. Initially I was not very clear what he meant by that but with time and experience, I realized that he wanted me to avoid being a perfectionist and over-obsessive about some details, e.g. spending an awful lot of time pursuing small changes that will not affect the core idea. I remind myself of this motto all the time. What I learn from this is that nothing needs to be perfect and just do your best under the circumstances. Also, I think it also implies that one should not be afraid of expressing premature ideas. It is the improvement process that matters for the final output – which means getting a first draft of work ready within a reasonable period of time and then improving it gradually. Thirdly, for Peter travel was essential as it allowed him to reflect on his own contexts BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

and the problems there. His first visit to Scandinavia in 1955 had a profound influence on him: I first had a real sense of vision of what an alternative society could look like… Whenever I revisit Scandinavia … I am again and again profoundly uplifted by the potential of good urban planning, and equally cast down by our relative failure here in Britain, above all in London. (Hall, 1994, p. 16)

Therefore, whenever he knew we were going to travel somewhere, he was always supportive and willing to go to great lengths, acting as a travel advisor, drawing maps of the city (see figure 8) we would visit, outlining the public transport routes and the must-see landmarks. Moreover, Peter was a great tour guide. I still remember attending a day trip he organized for MSc urban regeneration students in March 2007 to Thames Gateway. The tour (see figure 9) was fascinating and Peter, then aged 75, amazed us by his boundless energy, the way he always walked ahead and much faster than most of students and his tireless explanation of the development which he illustrated with stories that captured us all. Apart from his working attitude and personality, in this last section, I would like to highlight what Peter thought were the key elements that made a good planner – traits he displayed himself until his death. He emphasized the importance of understanding history and the importance of the historical moments, as well as the significance of value systems and rational process (evaluation and analysis). These were concluding remarks of the speech mentioned earlier which Peter delivered in UCL in 1992. The first two points are timeless and still hold true twenty-three years later. In his words he affirmed: First, above all, planners should understand history and the importance of the historical moment. They should seize the hour and the day: there are moments, a very few moments, that actually matter critically in the history of cities as of everything else, and the critical point is to be there, and to act. Second, there are certain values that are 125


Figure 8. Peter’s drawing of strategic rail systems around Paris and Madrid in 2009.

Figure 9. Peter brought MSc Urban Regeneration students on a visit to Thames Gateway, London in March 2007. (Photo: Chia-Lin Chen) 126



inseparable from being a planner, rather like the doctor’s Hippocratic oath. You cannot be just opportunistic; you have to define what it is that you want to achieve, even if you have to modify and temper those objectives in the course of day to day practice… I once heard the great systems planner, C. West Churchman, give a seminar in Berkley … he said, ‘If you’re going to be a planner, you’d better first work out your religious beliefs, because until you’ve done that you cannot even start’. I think I now know what he meant, which is that you’d better get your value systems straight in your head. Third, and related to that, I think as planners we would be in a much firmer position if we were motivated by the kinds of belief in rational process, and planning related to analysis, and systematic evaluation, that reached their high point when I was young; we lost nearly all that in the intellectual holocaust of the 1970s, and I think planning has been permanently impoverished as a result. Whether or not it makes much sense to politicians, I think that ‘Back to Basics’ might be a pretty good slogan for the planning profession, and the planning schools, for the 1990s. (Hall, 1996, p.11-12)

In the last few months of his life, although illness gradually affected his physical movement, Peter’s working pace had never slowed down; instead, it intensified. Every weekend the SINTROPHER team received several emails from Peter regarding his progress in solving some issues related to the project. Such emails read: ‘Dear all, once again I’ve mis-spent weekend hours…’. He worked until the very last day of his life. His last message was one explaining his absence from a prearranged Boat Party. Typically, he made a humorous statement, playing down his absence: Stricken with less-than-optimal mobility as a result of treatment at UCLH, and in view of the change in the weather, I’ve reluctantly been persuaded that it wouldn’t be the best idea to contribute to the general jollity by falling off a gangplank into the Regent’s Canal… Sorry about this, and enjoy! (Email 25 July, 2014)

Concluding Remarks Over the past six years, it has been a privilege to work closely with Peter. He was a great mentor for his PhD students and BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 41 NO 1

colleagues who thrived under his endless encouragement and support. As the former UCL financial officer in the SINTROPHER project, Dominic Mikulski, rightly said ‘Peter certainly brought a level of energy and enthusiasm to his work that put people far younger than him to shame…’ (Email, 2014). Indeed, Peter’s personal characteristics embodied in his enthusiasm and energy, vision and foresight, his comprehensive knowledge, and his persistence have a profound impact on the future development of young professionals. Peter influenced me in three major ways. Firstly, stressing the importance of activeness in disseminating research in various ways in order to have wider impacts on policymaking and planning – essentially moving out of the Ivory tower. Secondly, when planning approaches and systems had proved problematic, Peter had shown us it is necessary to challenge and improve them. As planner one should have a sense of mission for the society in which one lives, and take actions that are clearly supported by one’s value system. Thirdly, addressing social and economic inequality is a permanent task for a planner. One needs to look at area-based problems and development and the issue of taking care of vulnerable places. Peter will be greatly missed; meanwhile, his spirit will live on forever. NOTE 1. Direct services from London to Blackpool resumed from 15 December 2014.

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(The Beeching Report). London: British Railways Board. Brotchie, J.F., Newton, P., Hall, P. and Nijkamp, P. (eds.) (1985) The Future of Urban Form: The Impact of New Technology. London: Croom Helm. Brotchie, J.F., Hall, P. and Newton, P. (eds.) (1987) The Spatial Impact of Technological Change. London: Croom Helm. Brotchie, J.F., Batty, M., Hall, P. and Newton, P. (eds.) (1991) Cities in the 21st Century: New Technologies and Spatial Systems. New York: Longman Cheshire. Brotchie, J.F., Batty, M., Blakely, E., Hall, P. and Newton, P. (eds.) (1995) Cities in Competition: Productive and Sustainable Cities for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Longman Australia. Brotchie, J.F., Newton, P., Hall, P. and Dickey, J. (eds.) (1999) East West Perspective on 21st Century Urban Development: Sustainable Eastern and Western Cities in the New Millennium. Aldershot: Ashgate. CEC (1996) Directive 96/48. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ TXT/?uri=CELEX:31996L0048. Chen, C.-L. and Hall, P. (2011) The impacts of high-speed trains on British economic geography: a study of the UK’s InterCity 125/225 and its effects. Journal of Transport Geography, 19, pp. 689–704. Chen, C.-L. and Hall, P. (2012)The wider spatialeconomic impacts of high-speed trains: a comparative study if Manchester and Lille subregions. Journal of Transport Geography, 24, pp. 89–110.

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Clark, C. (1958) Transport: the maker and breaker of cities. Town Planning Review, 28, pp. 238–250. Gourvish, T. (2004) British Rail 1947–1997: From Integration to Privatisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, P. (1992) On values and role models: the making of a planner (unpublished speech draft). Hall, P. (1994) On values and role models: the making of a planner. Regenerating Cities, 7, pp. 12–18. Hall, P. (1995) Towards a general urban theory, in Brotchie, J.F., Batty, M., Blakely, E., Hall, P. and Newton, P. (eds.) Cities in Competition: Productive and Sustainable Cities for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Longman Australia. Hall, P. (1996) It all came together in California. City, 1/2, pp. 4–12. Hall, P. and Pain, K. (eds.) (2006) The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from Mega-City Regions in Europe. London: Earthscan. Hall, P., Thrower, D. and Wray, I. (2014) Highspeed rail north: building a trans-Pennine mega-city. Town and Country Planning, 83, pp. 160–167. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steer Davies Gleave (2012a) Fylde Coast Transport Study: Options Ranking Report. Blackpool: Blackpool Borough Council. Steer Davies Gleave (2012b) Fylde Coast Transport Study Phase 2: Scheme Option Outline Business Cases: Final Report. Blackpool: Blackpool Borough Council.
