peter droege

Senior Advisor, Beijing Municipal Institute for City Planning and Design

Steering Committee member, Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN)

Conjoint Professor, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

Chair, World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE) Asia Pacific


CV [Please contact epolis for full version]

Professor Peter Droege has twenty-five years of experience in the practice, teaching and research of urban planning and design, working with government, industry and universities. He is also an author and public speaker on urban design, sustainable development and urban environment policies.  Over the past two decades, he has developed a special focus on the urban design and planning aspects of major infrastructure changes, in energy and information technology. He is the author of the recent book on transforming the urban energy system from fossil to renewable, The Renewable City.

Academic career. Peter Droege's academic experience stretches from the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 1976 and 1990, to his 1992/3 position at the University of Tokyo as Urban Development Engineering Endowed Chair holder, and his appointment as Lend Lease Chair and Professor of Urban Design at the University of Sydney in March 1993. He now holds a Conjoint Professorship with the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Newcastle.

Australian activities. Peter Droege's main professional and academic focus is the design, advice on and assessment of major architectural, civic and urban design and development policies, programs and projects. He has inaugurated and chaired the Urban Design Chapters of the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) at both the national and New South Wales state levels. He worked for the national as well as New South Wales and Victorian state governments on the policy and assessment of development, and has reviewed, evaluated and advised on a large number of staged bids, development proposals and urban design projects, along with academically based efforts. Australian public entities served include a number of local governments, Melbourne Docklands Authority and VicUrban, City West Development Corporation and Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, the Australian Technology Park, Landcom, PlanningNSW/Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources (DIPNR) and others. He frequently serves as expert witness in the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales.

Peter Droege was a key member of former Prime Minister Paul Keating's Urban Design Task Force and served as an adviser to the National Urban and Regional Development Review. Prior to this he was urban form and concept design adviser to the initial studies for the eco-industrial Japan-Australia joint new city development initiative Multifunction Polis (MFP) planned at national level.

Internationally, Peter Droege's professional work is focused on comprehensive and integrated approaches to urban design and development on local, state and national government levels, with a special emphasis on sustainable development, water and energy aspects.

International public-sector work ranges from municipal-government assignments such as his posting as senior resident urban design advisor to the City of Amsterdam (1991-92), to advisory services to Singapore's National Computer Board and urban development aspects of its IT 2000 Plan, his prior public facility programming, planning and design position with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to his role as leader of several United Nations Development Programme missions, in Africa and the Middle East. He also has held both managerial, executive and partner positions in private design firms.

Peter Droege has been active in China for since 1985. In 2003 he completed a media industry geared planning and design study for a 720 hectare site in inner Beijing, led international teams that won first prizes for two development projects in Chongqing (2004), first prize and the main commission in Ningbo's Cicheng new town development (2003, 120,000 inhabitants) as well as the second prize in the 1.200 hectare Beijing 2008 Olympic Master Plan Competition (2002). He has recently completed two major new town and foreshore planning schemes, one for a large inner city riverfront area in Zhejiang Province's capital, and one for a twelve-kilometre stretch of harbour area, for the fishing port of Shipu (2004), and currently directs an international consortium developing a broad regeneration plan of the ancient town of Cicheng, Zhejiang Province.

Professor Droege is appointed as Advisor to the Beijing Municipal Institute for City Planning and Design, since 2002. In 2005 he has been invited to serve as Visiting Professor and Director, Centre for Sustainable Urbanism, School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Beijing University.

From 1999 until 2002 he directed the research development program 'Solar City' under the auspices of the International Energy Agency's Committee on Energy Research and Technology (CERT) efforts. Since 2001 he serves as Chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy, Asia Pacific.

Peter Droege has won several other urban design awards, including Grand Prizes in international concept design competitions staged in Japan: on information technology and urban change (1987), and on ecologically sustainable design strategies for Sagami Bay, a coastal region occupied by twelve cities and towns (1990). He was the editor and leading author of a seminal book on IT, telecommunications and urban form (Intelligent Environments , Elsevier 1997), and wrote the Renewable City (Wiley, 2006).