Peter Newman (environmental scientist)


Peter William Geoffrey Newman AO is an environmental scientist, author and educator based in Perth, Western Australia. He is currently Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and was awarded an Order of Australia for sustainable transport and urban design in 2014.
He has a PhD degree in Chemistry and completed post doctoral studies in Environmental Science, Delft University, Dip EST, Environmental Science, 1972.
Newman has written 20 books and over 330 papers on sustainable cities and is most known for creating the term "automobile dependence" in the second half of the 1980s. He was closely associated with the redevelopment of Perth's rail system from 1979 to the present, which is now seen as a model for how car dependent cities can change towards more sustainable transport. He is a lead author for transport on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Career and influence

Newman is best known internationally for popularizing the term ‘automobile dependence’ in the second half of the 1980s to explain how the cities of the time based on sprawling suburbs were inevitably leading to the growth in automobile use. He led an international research project with colleague Jeff Kenworthy on transport practices and structures. The results were published in Cities and Automobile Dependence: An International Sourcebook, which introduced the concept of car dependence – now a feature of planning literature and policy. The two researchers later collaborated on the book Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence which was launched in the White House in 1999, as the President's Council on Sustainable Development was moving toward a more urban focus, and more recently The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-based Planning.
In Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices written with Isabella Jennings, Newman shows how city residents can begin to reintegrate into their bioregional environment, and how cities themselves can be planned with ecological sustainability in mind. Drawing on examples from many parts of the world, the authors show how urban redevelopment in some cities has involved harvesting rainwater, greening roofs, and producing renewable energy. Other cities have biodiversity parks for endangered species, community gardens that support a connection to their foodshed, and pedestrian-friendly spaces that encourage walking and cycling.

Local, State and Federal Government

Between 1976–80 Newman has served as a local government councillor in the City of Fremantle. Newman has been a government advisor through three secondments to the Western Australian State Government. In the last secondment, he was the Director of Sustainability Policy in the Department of Premier and Cabinet where he managed and wrote the State Sustainability Strategy: the first in the world at the state/province level. In 2004–2005 he was the New South Wales Sustainability Commissioner.
Between 2008 and 2014 he was a member of Infrastructure Australia.

Academia

From 1989 to 2007 Newman was Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch University in Murdoch, Western Australia. In 2007, Newman left Murdoch University to join Curtin University. In 2006–07 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

International advisor

Peter Newman is member of the Global Research Network on Human Settlements Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UNESCO SCOPE Ecopolis Project. He is Senior Consultant at Gehl Architects, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Honors and recognition