Peter Newman

Peter William Geoffrey Newman (born 1945) is an environmental scientist, author and educator based in Perth, Western Australia. He is currently Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University. He is best known for his contributions to the development of Perth’s electrified metropolitan rail network through both activist and official consulting roles since the 1980s. 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 community opposition to the closure of the Fremantle Railway in 1979 and subsequent redevelopment of the metropolitan rail system from 1983 to the present. He is a lead author for transport on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has a PhD degree in Chemistry (1972, University of Western Australia) and completed post doctoral studies in Environmental Science, Delft University, Dip EST, Environmental Science, 1972.