TITLE: homological 2 dimensional groups
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: In a  Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici paper  by Benno Eckman  and Heinz  Müller in  1980 (volume  50,  pages 510-520) proved  that poincaré Duality  Groups  of  dimension 2  with  positive first Betti  number  are  surface  groups. 
Is  there any  development  into  proving  that certain groups  of   (homological) or  geometric dimension  2  are surface  groups?

REPLY [4 votes]: See my paper with Bruce Kleiner "Geometry of quasiplanes" for general unital commutative rings, it also contains a reference to the paper by Eckmann  and Linnell from 1983 where they prove the theorem for PD(2) groups over Z and to the one by Bowditch which works over Q.