Professor Peter Batey 1971
Peter Batey (MCD 1971) was appointed in 1989 to the Lever Chair in Town and Regional Planning at Liverpool, the oldest Chair in the subject in the world. Peter was the first geographer-planner to hold the Chair, his predecessors –who include Abercrombie, Holford and Stephenson - having all been architect planners. A distinguished planning analyst, Peter has an international reputation for his contributions in quantitative urban and regional analysis. Peter has served as President of the Regional Science Association International and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
At Liverpool, Peter has served as Head of the Department of Civic Design and as Dean of the Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies. Throughout his career, Peter has maintained a strong involvement in planning practice. Prior to joining academia, Peter worked in two local planning authorities, Lancashire and Greater Manchester, while in 2004 he was appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister to lead the Mersey Basin Campaign, the pioneering cross-sector partnership responsible for cleaning-up the River Mersey and its tributaries.
Peter Geraghty 1990
Peter Geraghty joined the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham following graduation. He became a chartered town planner (MRTPI) in 1992 and a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute (FRTPI) in 2013. Peter was appointed an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Liverpool during the period 1992-2001 & 2005-2007. In 1999, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Liverpool.
Peter is currently Executive Director at Hertsmere Borough, Hertfordshire where he is responsible for the overall strategic leadership and corporate management at the Council, working to achieve effective delivery of Council priorities, strategies and major projects.
Peter was appointed to the Government’s Capital Investment Advisory Board of the Department for International Trade in 2013. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, (FRSA) in 2010 and as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, (FAcSS) in 2020. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 2016.
Peter’s senior leadership roles have included Chair of the Board of Trustees of the RTPI in 2012-2013, President of the RTPI in 2013, and Vice-President of the Commonwealth Association of Planners 2018-2019. Other roles have included Chair of the International Committee of the RTPI 2014-18, RTPI Representative on the Global Planners' Network 2014-17, and RTPI representative on the UK Built Environment Advisory Group for Humanitarian Action (UKBEAG) 2016-17. Peter is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Town & Country Planning Association 2018-21. He is currently Junior Vice President of the Planning Officers’ Society and will become President of the Society in 2024-25.
David Morkel 1991
On leaving the Department of Civic Design in 1991, David Morkel went on to study for a Master’s degree in Landscape Design in Manchester. Following graduation, he joined a planning, landscape and ecological consultancy in Oxford, working mainly on landscape planning studies and environmental impact assessments. With the economic downturn of the time appearing to show no sign of abating, he left the UK in 1996 to join URBIS Limited, a planning, urban design and landscape consultancy in Hong Kong, where he remains today as a Director of Planning & Urban Design.
URBIS was founded in 1977 as the first specialist planning and urban design consultancy in Hong Kong and the first projects were seminal studies for two of Hong Kong’s second generation new towns. A decade after joining URBIS, David left the Hong Kong office to spend 10 years running offices in Dubai and then Shanghai, working on some aspirational projects, including a proposed new city in Dubai for a population of 1.1 million, often in very challenging planning environments.
David returned to the Hong Kong office in 2017 where he now has a team of over 90 staff, who are working on a wide variety of planning and urban design projects, including a new town extension, agricultural development policy, railway strategy, guidelines for sustainable planning as well as a wide range of statutory planning applications.
Warren Marshall 1992
Warren Marshall has worked for Peel Ports since 2007 as Group Planning Director, responsible for the promotion and consenting of port development projects, masterplanning, environmental impact Assessment, and stakeholder consultation. He is advisor to Peel Ports in terms of current and emerging Government planning and transportation policy and legislation affecting the business operations.
Prior to this Warren worked for 5 years in the housing and urban regeneration sector having been employed by Bellway Plc and McInerney Plc responsible for the promotion of “brownfield” residential and mixed use redevelopment schemes. Warren has extensive Local Authority planning experience having been employed at Sefton, Trafford, and Warrington Councils (1990 – 2002) across the spectrum of the town and country planning function.
Warren has been a Chartered Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) since 1994 and was awarded Fellowship in September 2019. He has also been a Chartered Member of the Institute of Logistics and Transport (CMILT) since 2012.
Professor Joon Sik Kim 1998
Joon Sik Kim is a Professor and Head of the Urban Planning and Design Department at Xi'an Jiatong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), a partner university to the University of Liverpool in China. After graduating with a Master of Civic Design and a Doctor in Philosophy (Town and Regional Planning, 2002), both from the University of Liverpool, he worked as a professional consultant for ten years on a project concerned with developing smart sustainable cities in South Korea, China, and the Middle East. He was responsible for designing an appropriate smart city model by applying innovative technical solutions with an understanding of the city's spatial, socio-economic, and political environments. He returned to the academic community in 2012 and has been at XJTLU for over ten years.
His research interests focus on strategic planning in smart cities, environmental planning, and geographic information systems. With his practical experiences in GIS and smart cities, he is concerned about how emerging technologies can be applied in urban development and management in a real-life context. His interdisciplinary research unites two strands of recent significant sustainability inquiry: collaborative planning for sustainable watershed revitalisation (academic background); and smart sustainable cities (practical experience). He argues that a collaborative planning approach, as presented in contemporary planning theories, can be applied to, and improve, the practice of sustainable development and smart cities. The combination of an academic and a practical background provides a firm foundation for developing his research activities, strategies, and practices across diverse academic disciplines.
Dr Olivier Sykes 2000
Olivier Sykes studied on the MCD from 1998 – 2000 having come to planning from history where he had developed an interest in historical processes of suburbanisation in the 19th. century. The MCD led to an interest in the international aspects of planning, notably the rise of European spatial planning in the 1990s and 2000s. This was reinforced by an epic MCD field study (2000) which saw Olivier’s year visit Berlin, the Ruhr region, and Amsterdam. This interest led him to commence PhD studies at Liverpool exploring how European spatial planning was contributing to shaping planning in EU member states.
Olivier joined the planning staff, from 2004, where his main areas of research and teaching continued to relate to international and comparative planning studies, including on themes such as urban regeneration and heritage. He has continued to work on planning, urban and environmental policy systems in different countries for funders including the EU, regional and local government, the UK and French governments, and the RTPI.
In 2021 Olivier became the Discipline Lead for Planning at Liverpool and has recently completed a book on international planning studies due to be published in November 2022 (Sykes, Shaw and Webb, 2022). He remains a regular contributor to academic and professional publications in planning on European and international planning themes.
Viral Desai 2011
Viral is an Associate Director at Atkins and, since graduation, has worked in both the public and private sectors in the UK and overseas. He is a Chartered Town Planner with experience covering major infrastructure, residential, and specifically NSIP projects. Viral’s commitment to Town Planning and his high-quality work has been recognised by the Royal Town Planning Institute and he was Young Planner of the Year in 2015.
Viral is passionate about the delivery of major infrastructure projects and has been DCO Manager on M25 J10 and DCO Delivery Manager on M25 J28. He also has a strong residential background across the UK and has been delivering a number of residential schemes across the Midlands for Homes England and Telford and Wrekin Council, and Coventry City Council. .
Viral was the Young Planners Co-ordinator for the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) for 6 years and helped to build a network of Young Planners across the Commonwealth. He helped deliver the ‘Powering our common future: Urbanism In the Commonwealth Youth Manifesto’ to the Commonwealth Summit in London in 2018. Since then he has continued his leadership the RTPI and is a member of the England Policy Panel and is also a Council member of the National Infrastructure Planning Association (NIPA).
Kim Power (née Cooper) 2011
Kim Power graduated from the University of Liverpool with a Distinction on the Master of Civic Design degree, and she was awarded the Universities’ ‘Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize’. She is currently a Principal Urban Planner within Arup’s cities, planning and design team based in Liverpool, UK.
Kim previously worked for Liverpool Vision and she later joined Liverpool City Council in the Chief Executives Policy Team. Her work included the Liverpool City Region Devolution Deal, the Mayoral Commission for Environmental Sustainability and the Liverpool Fairness Commission.
Kim’s work at Arup involves developing strategic city plans, site-based regeneration visions and strategies, and regeneration policies. She is working on the UK Towns Fund project as a Town Coordinator supporting over 10 towns in the development of Town Investment Plans. She is also experienced in delivering stakeholder engagement and was the City Readiness Engagement Lead for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Kim was the Project Manager behind the Cities Alive publication ‘Designing cities that work for women’ where she led a collaborative team from ARUP, UNDP, and the University of Liverpool. She remains heavily involved in Arup’s work on gender equality and social inclusion in cities.
Kim is a Board Member of the Liverpool City Region LEP Built Environment Board, and a Board Member of Professional Liverpool. She has held previous roles as a Commissioner on the Liverpool City Region Town Centre Commission and as Chair of the Royal Town Planning Institute for the North West region in the UK.
Jared Alves 2017
Following graduation, Jared Alves joined the planning team at the City of Lowell, Massachusetts, a post-industrial city within commuting distance of Boston. In Lowell, Jared served on a planning team vetting projects big and small, from infill brownfield redevelopments to home extensions. He convinced the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals to approve the city’s first modern multifamily building with no on-site parking, which replaced a vacant city centre lot. Outside his primary role, Jared also helped crowdfund a project to design and revitalise a city centre park, and wrote a successful $160,000 grant application for the state’s Shared Streets Program.
Since 2020, Jared has been an Urban Planner for the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and reviews large-scale projects designed to meet the significant demand for new homes in greater Washington, DC. He has obtained City Council approval of a series of major housing projects and is also the city’s project manager for the Landmark Mall redevelopment, a 21-hectare shopping centre that opened in the 1960s. Redeveloping Landmark Mall includes demolishing the former mall buildings, creating internal streets, constructing a hospital campus with a public-private partnership, and building a complete neighbourhood with offices, residences, a fire station, and parks. In December 2022, he will bring forward the first phase: four buildings combining residential, retail and office space for the Planning Commission and City Council to review.
Outside work, Jared explores his city’s changing neighbourhoods and restaurants and is keen to bring ideas back from his trips visiting other parts of the wider world. He received his professional planning certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners in May 2021 and lives with his partner, Maxime Devilliers, a fellow MCD graduate in downtown Washington, DC.
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