Graduated from the School of Architecture and received his PhD in Spatial Planning from the Vienna University of Technology. He started his academic career there as research assistant at the Institute of Urban Design and Spatial Planning, later becoming Assistant Professor and Honorary Professor for Regional Planning and Regional Development. He was elected at UT Vienna as Deputy and Vice President (Rector), fulfilling the role from 1999 to 2011, with changing responsibilities including finances, infrastructure and university development. During a break from the university in 1991 and 1992, he worked as Deputy Head of the Planning Department of the projected World Exhibition Vienna – Budapest, which was later cancelled. Returning from the experience of this huge international project, he successfully established yearly international student planning projects as part of the planning course at his university, in close cooperation with various universities in Europe, the US and Israel. The fall of the Iron Curtain - also along the Austrian borders - gave him the chance to concentrate on research, lecturing and publishing on the issues of cross-border planning and endogenous development in these long-neglected border regions. He was a member of the AESOP Congress Committee between 2003 and 2007, heading the organisation of the AESOP Congress in 2005, and Congress Officer of AESOP ExCo from 2012 until 2016.