Graduated from the School of Architecture at TU München in 1967 and received a PhD from TU Wien in 1971. Appointed as Professor by the School of Planning at Universität Dortmund in 1974, he was Director of Research of the Institut für Raumplanung until 1993. From then until his retirement in 2006, he held the Jean Monnet Chair of Spatial Planning in Europe. He is an honorary professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London and a visiting professor of the Dong Nam University in Nanjing, China. He is an elected member of the German Academy of Spatial Planning (ARL) and an honorary member of AESOP and the RTPI in London. In 1994 he received an Honorary PhD from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. As a visiting professor he has taught at universities in Europe, the US and in China. In 1987 he founded AESOP and was its first president from 1987 to 1990. Since his retirement in 2006, he has resided in Potsdam, travelling frequently to China and relentlessly writing on territorial planning in Europe and in China, regional restructuring in the Ruhr, and on creative knowledge and smart city development.