Introduction

There are two concerns, which I thought I should express at this occasion, where planners from all over West and Eastern Europe meet to do what the constitution of AESOP suggests: to promote planning education and research: The organisers have generously granted my 15 minutes to present my thoughts on an issue, which concerns almost everybody in Europe these days. For me it is a very serious concern.

Before doing so I have to ask my British and American colleagues for their understanding. They know how much I appreciate the contributions of the Anglo-American planning community to the discipline, to theory building and formation, and to the promotion of planning as an independent academic discipline. I am fully aware that my brief expose is provocative. It is deliberately provocative. hence the title " unconditional surrender". I hope it will trigger off a debate among AESOP schools and educators and researchers in planning schools across Europe, of how to re-act to trends which already have considerable impacts on the structure and the future of planning schools across Europe and beyond, trends, which, I am afraid, are trends of no return.

I hope you will accept that my concerns are not expressed from the parochial perspective of a German university struggling for European excellence, nor from the perspective of an aging European backbencher, who is defending good old times...

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