After reading history at Tübingen and Berlin universities, he moved to London in 1964 and embraced the nascent counterculture then taking hold there: the literary editor Diana Athill, who knew him during this time, described him in her memoir Make Believe as "the drop-out son of a rich German family... deep in the process of discovering his own loathing of capitalism, violence, and racism.
"[2] In 1971, as a community worker in Notting Hill Gate, Girardet befriended the US Black Power activist Hakim Jamal, a published author.
[6] Since then, Girardet has worked as a cultural and urban ecologist – as a writer, filmmaker, lecturer and international consultant – specialising in 'regenerative development'.
He is the author and co-author of 14 books and reports, and 50 TV documentaries primarily concerned with the interaction between a global civilisation and the world’s environment.
[8] He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects,[10] and a visiting professor at the University of the West of England.