Born in Berlin, Conzen fled to Britain in 1933 and sought opportunities in his speciality, town planning. After the Second World War Conzen was very content to stay in Britain and moved to a lectureship in the geography department at King's College, Newcastle (later the University of Newcastle upon Tyne), and north-east England became the laboratory for his ground-breaking contributions to urban morphology. Sensitivity to historical layering in the landscape, rigorous terminology, and carefully designed visual representations were hallmarks of his work. .
It was not until 1960 that Conzen's most important piece of research, Alnwick, Northumberland: a Study in Town-Plan Analysis, was published. It was intended as the first part of a trilogy analysing the town plan, building fabric, and land use of an urban area. So exacting were the standards of its author that it took about eight years to complete, and the two companion volumes were never completed. The first edition was quickly followed by Conzen's application of its techniques and concepts to the city centre of Newcastle upon Tyne. Conzen pioneered such ideas as the burgage cycle, market concretion, the urban fringe belt, fixation lines, and townscape cells.
Conzen held a personal chair in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1965 until his retirement in 1972. It was only after his retirement that his reputation spread beyond the disciplines of geography and planning and beyond his countries of birth and adoption.
A memorial to Conzen and his wife, Freda, stands in St Andrew's and West Jesmond cemetery. where his ashes were buried. Below the dedication has been symbolized the meeting of the three roads in the triangular market place at Alnwick, the core of the historic town that was the subject of Conzen's monograph that transformed geographical urban morphology.