www.soplacememorial.com

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Introduction

Thomas Cook (1808-1892, Derbyshire)

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM FRS (1823 – 1913, Llanbadoc)

Dr. Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904, Karlsruhe)

Sir Ebenezer Howard, OBE (1850-1928, London)

Dr. Georg Simmel (1858-1918, Berlin)

Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944, Kansas)

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959, Wisconsin)

Otto Schlüter (1872 – 1959, Witten)

Sir Frederick James Osborn, OBE (1885–1978, London)

Dr. Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889-1975, Missouri)

Lewis Mumford, KBE (1895-1990, New York)

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009, Brussels)

Jane Jacobs, OC OOnt (1916-2006, Pennsylvania)

Laurence Wilfred “Laurie” Baker, MBE (1917-2007, Birmingham)

Wally Olins, CBE (1930-2014, London)

Sir Dr. Peter Geoffrey Hall, OBE FBA (1932 – 2014, London)

Dr. Roger F. Tomlinson, OC (1933-2014, Cambridge)

Peter Berg (1937-2011, New York)

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“As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also nec-essary…because man doth not live by bread only but by the wondrous and unknowable work of God.” – John Ruskin, Unto The Last

We live in an era where globalisation and rapid urbanisation in the last half century has affected the fundamentals of hu-man life, operating within networks of places. An era when the ideals of human rights have moved centre stage socially, economically and politically in promoting their significance for the construction of a better world. For the most parts the concepts circulating do not fundamentally challenge hegemonic, liberal and neoliberal logics, or the dominant modes of loyalty and state action.

In the words of renowned urban sociologist, Robert Park : “The city is man’s most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire – but if the city is the world which man created, it is the world he is henceforth fated to live in. Therefore, in making the city, man has remade himself.” The question of what kind of place we desire cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationships to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetics values we hold dear.

To address these issues and much more, SoPlace Memorial Lecture Series gathers wisdom and pioneering thoughts from remarkable luminaries in defining the application of sense of place in our in our daily lives. These distinguished luminaries have left behind a legacy of lifetime work and achievements. It will also demonstrate sound evidence-based analysis on real issues at stake, identify propositions and provide case studies that demonstrate how such propositions actually work, are being tested and have been implemented.

In essence, SoPlace Memorial Lecture Series will strive to bring together diverse stakeholders of the sense-of-place fraternity to engage in meaningful exchanges towards a common good. In so doing, it is hoped that more collaborative efforts will be forged to inspire a ‘new breed’ of the sense-of-place mainstream to take on new challenges in creating sustainable and equitable places around the world. This new generation of sense-of-place drivers will be privileged to draw upon the wealth of knowledge and ideas presented to them, to help them develop their depth of thoughts and advance the well-being of a place as a whole.

We take this opportunity to pay tribute to the many departed pioneers and fathers who have impacted our world in ways we never imagined before. We believe that their legacy of good values and contributions will give us a better un-derstanding of the evolving characteristics of places and spaces. From here on, we can seek to identify more sustainable ways in naturalising and humanizing places for successive generations to come.

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Thomas Cook (1808-1892, Derbyshire)Father of Modern Tourism

Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook (1808 – 1892), the founder of the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son (eventually becoming Thomas Cook Group in 2007), is a pioneer excursionist. Cook’s idea to offer excursions came to him while walking from Market Harborough to Leicester to attend a meeting of the Temperance Society. After the first privately chartered excursion train to be advertised to the general public, Cook’s tours of Eu-rope resulted in him being described as the “Napoleon of Excursions”.

Thomas developed two important travel systems: one was the hotel cou-pon, launched in 1868, which travellers could use to pay for hotel accommodation and meals instead of using money; the other was his circular note, first issued in 1874 and a forerunner of the travellers cheque, which enabled tourists to obtain local currency in exchange for a paper note issued by Thomas Cook. His great ideas included offering British Lords to open their castles and parks for sightseeing, mak-ing pilgrimage a business concept, and inventing guidebooks.

The climax of his career came at the age of 63 when he departed from Leicester on a tour of the world. The Father of Modern Tourism produced his first handbook to England in the 1840s and his company had established offices around the world by 1888. In 1890, the company sold over 3.25 million tickets. In 1919, for the first time in history of tourism, tour operator “Thomas Cook” used aircraft to transport tourists.

As of today, this is one of the largest travel companies and brands in the world.

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Alfred Russel Wallace, OM FRS (1823 – 1913, Llanbadoc)Father of Biogeography

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM FRS

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM FRS (1823-1913, Llanbadoc) was a British natu-ralist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist but best known as the Father of Biogeography. He first extensively studied the Amazon River and then the Malay Archipelago (identification of Wallace Line) which he had collected numerous specimen of animals. He was considered the 19th century’s leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species.

Wallace brought popularity to the study of biogeography (branch of geog-raphy that studies the past and present distribution of the world’s many species) through his extensive studies for a general review of the geographic distribution of animals. His research was done through the system developed by Sclater for birds (dividing the earth into six separate geographic regions for describing species dis-tribution) to cover mammals, reptiles and insects. Wallace created the basis for the zoogeographic regions still in use today through the publication of The Geographi-cal Distribution of Animals (1876).

The book discussed all of the factors then known to influence the current and past geographic distribution of animals within each geographical region. These included the effects of the appearance and disappearance of land bridges and the effects of periods of increased glaciation. He provided maps that displayed factors that affected the distribution of animals. He also summarised all the known families and genera of the higher animals and listed their known geographic distributions.

Among the many awards presented to Wallace were the Darwin Medal (1890), the Order of Merit (1908), the Royal Society’s Royal Medal (1868) and Copley Medal (1908).

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Dr. Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904, Karlsruhe) Father of Human Geography

Dr. Friedrich Ratzel

Dr. Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904, Karlsruhe), the Father of Human Geography, originated from Baden. He received his Ph.D. in 1868 from the University of Heidel-berg.

After the completion of his schooling, Ratzel began a period of travels that saw him transform from zoologist/biologist to geographer. He began field work in the Mediterranean, writing letters of his experiences. These letters led to a job as a traveling reporter for the Kölnische Zeitung (“Cologne Journal”), which provid-ed him the means for further travel. Ratzel embarked on several expeditions, the lengthiest and most important being his trip to North America, Cuba, and Mexico. This trip was a turning point in Ratzel’s career. He produced a written work of his account, Städte-und Kulturbilder aus Nordamerika (Profile of Cities and Cultures in North America), which would help establish the field of cultural geography. After he accepted an appointment at Leipzig, his lectures were widely attended, notably by the influential American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple.

Ratzel produced the foundations of human geography in his two-volume Anthropogeographie in 1882 and 1891. This work was misinterpreted by many of his students, creating a number of environmental determinists. He published his work on political geography, Politische Geographie, in 1897. It was in this work that Ratzel introduced concepts that contributed to Lebensraum and Social Darwinism. His three volume work The History of Mankind was published in English in 1896 and contained over 1100 excellent engravings and remarkable chromolithography.

Immensely industrious throughout his life, Ratzel had many followers who had adopted and further elaborated his theories.

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Sir Ebenezer Howard, OBE (1850-1928, London)Father of Garden Cities

Sir Ebenezer Howard, OBE

Sir Ebenezer Howard, OBE (1850-1928, London) was a Parliamentary short-hand writer and best known as the Father of Garden Cities. The time he spent in the parliament as well as his readings on Bellamy’s 1888 utopian novel, Looking Back-ward exposed him to ideas about social reform, and had helped inspire his ideas for the Garden City movement.

He disliked the development of densely packed urban living and rural de-cline and thus offered envisage curing this problem by merging the benefits of both town and country into Garden Cities of limited size, planned in advance, and sur-rounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land. His envisage was published on 1898 entitled To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform which later republished as Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902). Garden Cities of Tomorrow proposed that society be reorganised with networks of garden cities that would break the strong hold of capitalism and lead to cooperative socialism.

To realise his envisage, he founded the Garden Cities Association, known now as the Town and Country Planning Association in 1899. The association led to the creation of Letchworth Garden City, Herts (from 1903) and the second experi-ment, Welwyn Garden City, also in Herts (from 1919). With the success of both cities, Howard hoped that many other towns would be built emulating the same ideals.

Howard was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1924 and a Knight Bachelor in 1927 for his services on Garden Cities Movement.

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Dr. Georg Simmel (1858-1918, Berlin)Father of Urban Sociology

Dr. Georg Simmel

Dr. Georg Simmel (1858-1918, Berlin), a first generation German sociologist, originated from Berlin. Simmel studied history and philosophy at the University of Berlin.

After receiving his Ph.D. and becoming a lecturer, his courses in sociology, philosophy, history, ethics, and cultural criticism were popular with students and were respected in academic circles. His lectures became leading intellectual events. Although he was always considered an academic outsider, he cofounded the Ger-man Society for Sociology with Ferdinand Tonnies and Max Weber and appointed to a professor with chair at the then University of Strassburg. Renowned for his speak-ing abilities and his writings, he gained the admiration of several prominent con-temporaries including Max Weber.

Publishing more than 200 articles and over a dozen books in several social science fields, Simmel was a most prolific writer due to his wide range of interests and innovative thought. Philosophie des Geldes is commonly seen as Simmel’s most pivotal work. In it Simmel utilizes his historical, psychological, political and social lenses to open the subject to as much scrutiny as possible while he looks for the substrata of the “historical materialism” of the subject. His major works reflect-ed his view on the relevance of space to sociological thinking and analysis. Thus, he laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism.

Besides participated in the foundation of main and most important so-ciological periodicals such as the American Journal of Sociology and L’Année So-ciologique, he was the President of the first German Sociological Association (Deut-sche Gesellschaft für Soziologie). He was made doctor honoris causa of the faculty of political science at Heidelberg University.

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Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944, Kansas)Father of Urban Ecology

Robert Ezra Park

Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944, Kansas), one of the most influential figures in early U.S. sociology, originated from Harveyville. At the sociology faculty of the University of Chicago, the Father of Urban Ecology made a number of groundbreaking contributions to the developing field, in-cluding coining the phrase “human ecology”, delineating systemic social behaviors and dynamics and helping to establish some of the parameters that would become cornerstones of sociological disciplines. The Chicago School of Sociology grew to prominence under Park. Along with Ernest Burgess and Louis Wirth, Park created a theoretical basis for a systematic study of society. His effectiveness as a teacher was demonstrated by the list of notable scholars who studied under him, including E. Franklin Frazier, Charles S. Johnson, Edgar T. Thompson, W. O. Brown, Louis Wirth, Everett C. Hughes, and Helen MacGill Hughes.

Park’s presidential address, published in Papers and Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting, Vol. XX, was entitled, “The Concept of Position in So-ciology,” and was a contribution to the relatively new concept of human ecology. Also known as the co-author of the book “Introduction to the Science of Sociology” which became a standard in the field, he developed the theory of urban ecology.

During his lifetime Park became a well-known figure both within and out-side the academic world. At various times from 1925 he was President of the Amer-ican Sociological Association and of the Chicago Urban League, and was a member of the Social Science Research Council.

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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959, Wisconsin)Father of Organic Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959, Wisconsin) was an American architect, inte-rior designer, writer, and educator but best known as the Father of Organic Architec-ture. Wright begun his career as a draftsman and built his career up to become an architect.

The term “organic architecture” was coined and introduced by Wright in 1908 into his philosophy of architecture which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design. He declared “organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life” (Wright, 1939). Organic architecture involves a respect for the properties of the materials and the harmonious relationship between the form or design and the function of the building.

Wright realised his idea and philosophy through his numerous architecture projects such Prairie Style houses, Fallingwater, Frederick Robie and the Avery and Queene Coonley House. Wright’s philosophy of architecture led him to be the pio-neer of modern architecture which allows his designs to work harmoniously with environment. Throughout his career, Frank Lloyd Wright published articles, gave lectures, and wrote many books. The philosophy of organic architecture was pres-ent consistently in his body of work and the scope of its meaning mirrored the de-velopment his architecture.

Wright received Gold Medal awards from The Royal Institute of British Archi-tects (RIBA) in 1941, American Institute of Architects (AIA Gold Medal) in 1949 and Franklin Institute’s Frank P. Brown Medal in 1953. Through his impressive achieve-ments, he was dubbed as “the greatest American architect of all time” by the Amer-ican Institute of Architects in 1991.

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Otto Schlüter (1872 – 1959, Witten)Father of Cultural Landscape

Otto Schlüter

Otto Schlüter (1872-1959, Witten), the Father of Cultural Landscape, origi-nated from Germany. Otto Schlüter is credited with having first formally used “cul-tural landscape” as an academic term in the early 20th century which is one of the turning point of geographical history. In 1908, Schlüter argued that by defining ge-ography as a Landschaftskunde (landscape science) this would give geography a logical subject matter shared by no other discipline. He defined two forms of land-scape: the Urlandschaft (transl. original landscape) or landscape that existed be-fore major human induced changes and the Kulturlandschaft (transl. ‘cultural land-scape’) a landscape created by human culture. The major task of geography was to trace the changes in these two landscapes.

Schluter was the first scientist to write specifically of natural landscapes and cultural landscapes. He published two notable papers, one on the ground plan of towns and the other his views on wider aspects of settlement geography. It might well be argued that these papers marked the formal emergence of urban morphol-ogy as a field of enquiry within geography.

Since Schlüter’s first formal use of the term, and Sauer’s effective promotion of the idea, the concept of cultural landscapes has been variously used, applied, debated, developed and refined within academia, when, in 1992, the World Heritage Committee elected to convene a meeting of the ‘specialists’ to advise and assist redraft the Committee’s Operational Guidelines to include ‘cultural landscapes’ as an option for heritage listing properties that were neither purely natural nor purely cultural in form (i.e. ‘mixed’ heritage).

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Sir Frederick James Osborn, OBE (1885–1978, London)Father of New Towns

Sir Frederick James Osborn, OBE

Sir Frederick James Osborn OBE (1885–1978, London) was a leading mem-ber of the UK Garden city movement and was chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association but best known as the Father of New Towns. In 1912, Osborn obtained the post of secretary-manager of the Howard Cottage Society in Letch-worth Garden City, founded by Ebenezer Howard.

Self-educated, widely cultured Osborn was then introduced to Howard’s idea of Garden City Movement to which he fell in love with and dedicated the rest of his life advocating the idea as well as became the movements’ principle. He left Howard Cottage Society in 1936 and worked his way up in the Town and Country Planning Association from Secretary to Chairman for years. Through his position in the association, he worked on the campaign which turned Garden Cities into the British New Towns movement.

The original reason for this movement was to reduce the concentration of people and workplaces in large towns and rebuild a fully healthy, socially satisfac-tory or efficient pattern. Besides that, a complementary motive was to bring fresh vitality and better services through modern industries of mechanization and other technical changes in farming that would reduce the populations.

To realise his idea, Osborn worked hard as a Chairman by organising, lobby-ing, agitating, addressing meetings, arranged conferences and more. His position in the association allows him to gain special access to government officials and influ-ential people to which offered him unprecedented opportunity of rebuilding Britain after WWII.

Osborn had released few publications include Green-Belt Cities (1946) and New Towns (1978).

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Dr. Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889-1975, Missouri)Father of Cultural Geography

Dr. Carl Ortwin Sauer

Dr. Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889-1975, Missouri), the Father of Cultural Geogra-phy, originated from Warrenton. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1915 before started teaching.

During his 30 years at University of California Berkeley, Sauer made geog-raphy prominent on the West Coast, initiated new ways of studying it and provided the foundation for cultural geography. There, he was Chairman of the Department of Geography for more than thirty years. Opposing the idea of environmental de-terminism, he founded the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography and the “Berkeley School” of geographic thought. Being a superb teacher, his students became undoubtedly the most distinctive group of academic geographers in the country.

Also known as the writer of the widely-cited “The Morphology of Landscape”, his works are in line with his view on the influence of people and natural processes on present landscapes over time and the influence of history in studying geography. After his retirement, Sauer continued his writing and research. Thus, even in his re-maining days he was sketching out the outline of a monograph on the geographical background of the American nation at its Bicentennial.

His contributions to the ideas on cultural landscapes earned him the Vega Medal of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, the Humboldt Med-al of the Berlin Geographical Society, an Honorary Fellowship from the American Geographical Society and a Daly Medal as well as the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (London).

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Lewis Mumford, KBE (1895-1990, New York)Founding Leader of Urban Civilization

Lewis Mumford, KBE

Lewis Mumford, KBE (1895-1990, New York) was an American writer, histo-rian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic but best known as the Founding Leader of Urban Civilization. He served as the architectural critic for The New Yorker magazine for over 30 years. His influential book, The City in History (1961), received the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Mumford was influenced by the writings of Patrick Geddes - one of the pio-neers of modern urban planning-and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford. In his award winning book, Mumford argues that the structure of modern cities is partially responsible for many social problems seen in western society. While pessimistic in tone, Mumford argues that urban planning should emphasize an organic relationship between people and their living spaces.

Mumford’s key work The City in History (1961), had swept historical study of the city’s role in human civilization. His other works include Sticks and Stones (1924) which is an insightful historical account of American architecture and The Urban Prospect (1968, essay collection). Among Mumford’s late works is The Myth of the Machine, 2 vol. (1967–70). Mumford’s early writings, both in periodicals and in books, established him as an authority on American architecture, art, and urban life as interpreted within their larger social context.

Mumford taught and held numerous research positions. He received the U.S. Medal of Freedom (1964) and was decorated Knight of the Order of the British Empire (1943).

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Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009, Brussels)Father of Structural Anthropology

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – 2009, Brussels), a celebrated philosopher and anthropologist, originated from Brussels. At an exceptionally early age and with great success, he passed the formidable philosophy aggregation examination. He studied philosophy and law at the University of Paris.

Although the Father of Structural Anthropology was well established among the academic circles by the mid-1950s, he rose to international prominence after he published Tristes Tropiques (A World on the Wane) in 1961 which was translated into twenty-seven languages and had touched many people from different fields. This partly philosophical and partly biographical account of his trips and life with the South American Indian tribes, and his next masterpiece – La Pensee Sauvage (The Savage Mind) that was published one year later laid the foundation for modern an-thropology as well as Western understanding of culture and civilisation. Later, in the half of the 1960s, Levi-Strauss focused on a four-volume study, the Mythologiques which was finally published in 1971.

One of the greatest ethnologists of all time, Besides being the first member of the Académie française, France’s highest honour for an intellectual, to reach the age of 100 and one of the few living authors to have his works published in the Bib-liothèque de la Pléiade, he became the longest-serving member of the Académie by becoming the Dean there in 2009.

He was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Columbia, memberships in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Erasmus Prize by the Dutch Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.

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Jane Jacobs, OC OOnt (1916-2006, Pennsylvania)Founding Leader of New Urbanism

Jane Jacobs, OC OOnt

Jane Jacobs, OC OOnt (1916-2006, Pennsylvania) was an American-Cana-dian journalist, author, and activist best known for her influence on urban studies as the Founding Leader of New Urbanism. Graduated from Columbia’s School of General Studies, she began her career at Iron Age magazine and several other com-panies later as reporter and writer.

Many of her published articles met with success as well as criticism which in-clude her influential book on urban planning and cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). The book condemns the urban renewal policies of the 1950s, which, she claimed, destroyed communities and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Jacobs advocated the abolition of zoning laws and restoration of free mar-kets in land, which would result in dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods. Her critiques led to an angry response from professionals of city planning field.

Without any professional training in the field of city planning, she depends on her observations and common sense to illustrate why certain places work, and what can be done to improve those that do not which inspire the New Urbanist movement. Jacobs led the way in advocating for a place-based, community-cen-tered approach to urban planning, decades before such approaches were consid-ered sensible.

After publishing the influential book, Jacob’s interests and writings broad-ened which led to subsequent book Wealth of Nations (1984), Systems of Survival (1993), and most recently The Nature of Economies (2000). She was selected to be an officer of the Order of Canada in 1996 for her seminal writings and thought-pro-voking commentaries on urban development.

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Laurence Wilfred “Laurie” Baker, MBE (1917-2007, Birmingham)Father of Low-Cost Homes

Laurence Wilfred “Laurie” Baker

Laurence Wilfred “Laurie” Baker (1917-2007, Birmingham), an award-win-ning British-born Indian architect, originated from Birmingham. Graduated from Birmingham School of Architecture in 1937, he pioneered sustainable and afford-able housing in India for more than 60 years. His respect for nature reflected his strong believe that a house should blend with the environment, without disturbing the natural features.

Influenced by Gandhi, he is known as the ‘brick master of Kerala’ for offering housing solutions to the roofless millions. Designing more than 2000 houses since 1970, his masterpiece was the Center for Development Studies, a 10-acre postgrad-uate campus built in the early 1970s on a hill above Thiruvananthapuram. Besides expressing the range and ingenuity of his imagination, the building was constructed for half the average cost of Indian university buildings. In addition, the low-cost mud homes he designed for the poor followed based on “the Baker model” had been replicated in their tens of thousands throughout the state. His legacy inspired many environmentally aware young Indian architects who now work for the Center of Science and Technology for Rural Development, a nonprofit organization following his approach.

Also known as “Gandhi of architecture”, he was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire), the Padma Shri (one of India’s highest civilian honours) by the Government of India, the Roll of Honour by the United Nations, was granted Indian citizenship and nominated for the Pritzker Award (considered the Nobel Prize for Architecture).

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Wally Olins, CBE (1930 - 2014)Father of Nation Branding

Wally Olins, CBE

Wallace “Wally” Olins, CBE (1930-2014, London) was a Chairman of Saffron Brand Consultants and best known as the Father of Nation Branding. Over the years he had been a visiting professor at many Business Schools around the world and a speaker on branding and communications issues globally.

Olins begun his career in the early 1960s, running Ogilvy & Mather in Mum-bai, before co-founded Wolff Olins with Michael Wolff in 1965. He sold the business in 1997 and went on to set up Saffron Brand Consultants in 2001, of which he was chairman until his death. Educated at Oxford in History, he was ‘the world’s lead-ing practitioner of branding and identity’, according to The Financial Times. He had advised many of the world’s leading commercial companies, including 3i, Renault, Repsol, BT, Volkswagen, Tata and Lloyd’s of London.

Olins, the business legend credited with inventing the concept of Nation Branding. The concept talks about whereby the nation provides an overwhelming sense of belonging. It is the focus for national expression and pride. If a nation is to be successful, national identity is about competing with neighbours to attract more economic activity than they do and become richer.

As a successful author, he had written seven successful books on branding entitled Brand New - The Shape of Brands to Come (2014), Wally Olins -The Brand Handbook (2008), Wally Olins - On Brand (2003) and more. Olins was awarded a CBE in 1999 for his achievements branding and identity.

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Sir Dr. Peter Geoffrey Hall, OBE FBA (1932 - 2014)Father of Urban Enterprise Zone

Sir Dr. Peter Geoffrey Hall, OBE FBA

Sir Dr. Peter Geoffrey Hall, OBE FBA (1932 – 2014, London) was an English town planner, urbanist and geographer but best known as the Father of Urban Enterprise Zone. He began his academic career as a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London with his Master’s degree and Doctorate in Geography from Cambridge and worked his way up to became the Chair of Planning at The Bartlett, University College, London (1992) where he remained until his death. He also served as President of both the Town and Country Planning Association and the Regional Studies Association.

Throughout his life, Hall wrote and edited 50 books whereby his first book London 2000 (1963) attracted widespread attention. He argued for major replan-ning of London and the south-east of England. His book The World Cities was pub-lished simultaneously in six languages in 1966. Hall was best known for proposing enterprise zones to help cities so awash in poverty and empty of industry that they needed drastic assistance. In his view, government needed to eliminate taxes and regulations that made businesses difficult to start or drove them elsewhere.

To realise his vision, Hall influenced Margaret Thatcher, to create enterprise zones in several big cities in England. Appealing to small-government conservatives and liberals from stricken cities, the idea quickly crossed the Atlantic.

Hall was knighted in 1998 for services to the Town and Country Planning Association and was awarded the Vautrin Lud International Geography Prize in 2001 and more. He also won the Regional Studies Prize for Overall Contribution to the Field of Regional Studies in 2008.

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Dr. Roger F. Tomlinson, OC (1933-2014, Cambridge)Father of Geographic Information Systems

Dr. Roger F. Tomlinson, OC

Dr. Roger F. Tomlinson, OC (1933-2014, Cambridge) was an English geog-rapher and best known as the Father of Geographic Information System (GIS). Dr. Tomlinson’s early career included serving as an assistant professor at Acadia, work-ing as the manager of the computer mapping division at Spartan Air Services in Ot-tawa, Ontario (following his studies at McGill), and work with the Government of Canada first as a consultant and later as a director of regional planning systems with the Department of Forestry and Rural Development.

It was during his tenure with the federal government in the 1960s that Dr. Tomlinson initiated, planned and directed the development of the Canada Geo-graphic Information System, the first computerized GIS in the world with the cre-ation of the Canada Land Inventory (CLI) in 1962. His early work in GIS paved the way for the increasingly widespread use of mapping and geospatial technologies in government agencies. From the 1970s until his death, Dr. Tomlinson worked in geographic consulting and research for a variety of private sector, government, and non-profit organizations, largely through his Ottawa-based company, Tomlinson As-sociates Ltd (1977).

He served 12 years of his life as a Chairman of the International Geographi-cal Union GIS Commission and pioneered the concepts of worldwide geographical data availability as Chairman of the IGU Global Database Planning Project in 1988.

Dr. Tomlinson pioneering work had changed the face of geography as a dis-cipline and he was awarded an Order of Canada in 2004. He became the first recipi-ent of the Robert T. Aangeenbrug Distinguished Career Award in 2005.

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Peter Berg (1937-2011, New York)Father of Bioregionalism

Peter Berg

Peter Berg (1937-2011, New York), a bioregionalism philosopher and found-er of Planet Drum Foundation, originated from Jamaica. He was widely acknowl-edged as an originator of the use of the terms bioregion and reinhabitation to de-scribe land areas in terms of their interdependent plant, animal, and human life.

He launched Planet Drum Foundation which is a grass-roots clearinghouse for hundreds of bioregional groups in the United States and abroad. In 1979, Berg introduced the Planet Drum Foundation review, Raise the Stakes. A radical review that argued that environmentalism was not demanding enough from the corpo-rate government, Berg suggested that bioregionalism was post-environmentalist in that it pushed the limits of the environmental movement; that it “raises the stakes.” The Planet Drum Foundation newsletter, PULSE, the successor to Raise the Stakes, helped popularize the notion that health, food, and culture were all bioregional is-sues, profoundly affected by the place in which they were situated.

As the author of “Reinhabiting California” and “Beating the Drum with Gary”, he stressed the identification with one’s community, awareness of its natural resources and commitment to restoring them. One of Berg’s current projects was in the town of Bahía de Caráquez. The town legally committed itself to becoming eco-logical and sustainable in 1999, and Planet Drum has helped by establishing a field office in the town, revegetating with native trees for erosion control and the creation of an urban “wild corridor,” carrying out a Bioregional Education after-school pro-gram, and other activities.

He was awarded the Gerbode Professional Development Program Fellow-ship for outstanding nonprofit organization executives.

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