I was born in January 1942 in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, UK. I studied architecture at Nottingham and qualified in 1968 but found urban planning research more interesting and went into that as a career. After a spell working at the Salvation Army International headquarters designing a new national meeting hall, community centre and commercial unit in Oxford Circus, central London, I obtained a Commonwealth Universities Scholarship to do research on squatter housing in India and that set the pattern for the next thirty years. En route to India in 1970,I was invited by the British Institute of Persian Studies in Teheran to act as the architect on an archaeological excavation of a Median temple and fortress complex in western Iran which the world's oldest - and intact - fire temple. I was invited back the next year to contribute to the excavations of the first capital city of the Parthians in the Great Salt Desert.

In India, I spent a year doing research on squatter housing settlements in Delhi and other cities and it was here that I had my real education. On returning to the UK, I was awarded funds by the Social Science Research Foundation to extend and write up the research and this led to a book on urban housing in the Third World. Later research projects followed in Turkey and other countries, which were complemented by periods of consultancy and training. I have also lectured in UK and other universities. During the last thirty years, I have been lucky to have opportunities to work in most parts of the work on housing, land and urban development issues.

I live with my wife Rita in Ealing, west London, where I set up Geoffrey Payne & Associates in 1995. Rita is currently Asia Editor for BBC World television. Our daughter Tania was born in 1975 and presently works in marketing and promotions for Fuji Cameras UK.