The author is professor of urban planning and regional development at HafenCity University Hamburg. He has been working in several European research projects, such as mySMARTLife, FORCE, REPAIR, Cities-4-People and CLEVER Cities. His expertise is in concepts, strategies and governance of sustainable urban and regional development (smart city, circular city, resilient city etc.), co-creation and citizen participation, and evaluation and social impact assessment of transdisciplinary research.