Staff and Center Associates

Dr. Peter B. Meyer
Director, Center for Environmental Policy and Management
Phone: (502) 852–8032
Fax: (502) 852–4558
E-mail: pbmeyer@louisville.edu

Peter B. Meyer, Ph.D. (Economics) is Professor Emeritus of Urban Policy and Economics and Director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Management (CEPM) at the University of Louisville. He is also President of The E.P. Systems Group, Inc, an environment and economic planning firm.

In a prior academic appointment, he served as Director of the Local Economic Development Assistance Center for The Pennsylvania State University from 1978 through 1987.

A specialist in community and local economic development and public policy evaluation, with almost 40 years’ experience, Dr. Meyer has been actively engaged in brownfield redevelopment research and practice, dealing with finance and risk management issues, including environmental insurance. He has also been engaged in sustainable development planning, including work on responses to sprawl, promotion of “smart growth” and the economics of infill and alternative urban spatial development, and the economics of conversion to a low carbon economy. His economic and environmental development consultation and technical assistance projects have spanned over a dozen states and scores of cities and counties in the US and he has worked in Europe and a number of third world settings.

He is in high demand as a speaker, and has been invited to speak about brownfields and smart growth planning at White House Conferences, EPA national and regional brownfield meetings, HUD Roundtables, and meetings hosted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the National Governors Association, among others. He has contributed economic analyses to economic development planning in more than half the states.  

On the international scene, he is a member of the executive committee of the International Urban Planning and Environment Associations, was a visiting scholar on urban regeneration with the SUBRIM consortium in the UK in 2006-7, and has lectured on sustainable development at a  number of European universities. In late 2007, Dr. Meyer worked with faculty at Khulna University in Bangladesh as a Fulbright Senior Scholar on sustainable development planning issues. A project narrative and slide show from that trip are available. 

His federal research/policy contributions in the US include his service as a specially appointed Expert Witness to the EPA Environmental Financial Advisory Board and his federal publications, which include:

• State Brownfield Insurance Programs, 2006 (with K. Yount)
• Environmental Insurance Products Available for Brownfields Redevelopment, 2005 (with K. Yount) (US EPA, 2006) 
• Brownfields Insurance for Public Sector-Led Development Projects: Experience and Methods  (with K. Yount) (US EPA, 2004) 
• State Brownfield Insurance Programs (with K. Yount) (US EPA, 2004) 
• Models of Government-Led Brownfield Insurance Programs (With K. Yount.) (US EPA, 2002).
• Environmental Insurance and Public Sector Brownfield Programs: Factors Affecting Pursuit of Insurance as a Redevelopment Tool (With K. Yount.) (US EPA, 2000).
• Reclamation and Economic Regeneration of Brownfields (Economic Development Administration 2000).
• An Assessment of State Brownfield Initiatives (HUD 2000).
  Environmental Insurance for Urban Redevelopment: A Feasibility Study (with K. Chilton) (HUD 1998).
• The Effects of Environmental Hazards and Regulation of Urban Redevelopment (with C. Walker, C. Bartsch, K Yount and others) (US Department of Housing and Urban Development - HUD 1998).
• Financing Small–Scale Urban Redevelopment Projects: A Sourcebook for Borrowers Reusing Environmentally Suspect Sites (with K. Yount) (EPA 1997).
  

In addition to working closely with communities on sustainable development options, Dr. Meyer is a scholar with over 120 articles, chapters and reports to his credit. His relevant books include:

• Projecting Environmental Trends from Economic Forecasts (co-authored with Thomas Lyons and Tara L. Clapp) (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2000).
• Contaminated Land: Reclamation, Redevelopment and Reuse in the United States and the European Union (co-authored with Kristen Yount and R.H. Williams) (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd., 1995).
• Comparative Studies in Local Economic Development: Problems in Policy Implementation (editor) (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).

 
Peter’s hobbies include escaping into alternative settings to keep a perspective on the daily grind: SciFi, SCUBA, and exploring other countries and cultures.