Geoffrey Payne

Housing and Urban Development Consultant, GPA

Geoffrey Payne is a housing and urban development consultant with nearly five decades of experience covering all regions of the world. He has undertaken research, consultancy and capacity building assignments for international development agencies, governments and academic institutions, published widely and contributed to numerous international conferences.

On receiving a Commonwealth Universities Research Scholarship in 1970, he travelled to India via Iran where he contributed to archaeological expeditions. In India, he undertook research on slum housing and urban planning in New Delhi and met his wife Rita from Assam, where they were married in 1971. They have a daughter Tania and a grandson Nico.

On returning to the UK, he was appointed lecturer and unit master at the AA School of Architecture where he established the Third World Studies Unit. In 1976, he was appointed architect-planner and deputy team leader for the UK funded Ismailia Demonstration Projects in Egypt. In 1981, he was appointed urban development adviser by the European Union to the Government of Papua New Guinea. After this, he was senior lecturer at Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes University, where he established and was Director of the Centre for Development and Environmental Planning (CENDEP). In 1990, he moved to the Development Planning Unit, UCL, where he established and directed the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development (BUDD).

He established Geoffrey Payne and Associates in 1995 and has since undertaken research projects funded by the UK government on many planning related issues. He has also undertaken consultancy and capacity building assignments on urban land management, land tenure and property rights for the World Bank, UN-Habitat, UNDP, USAID and other agencies. A key focus of his work is to strengthen local capacity. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and currently adviser to the President of the UK Built Environment Advisory Group.