Peter Marcuse is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has written extensively in English as well as German, in the US, the UK and various other European countries. His work has also appeared in newspaper and magazines such as The Nation,New York Newsday, Monthly Review, Shelterforce and many others.

David Madden is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. He has published academic articles in some of the leading urban studies journals, and is Editor at the journal CITY. He has also published reviews and commentary in outlets including LSE Review of Books, the Washington City Paper and The Guardian.

Peter Marcuse has long been recognised as one of the foremost critical urban scholars of our era. He has been writing about and participating in urban politics since the 1950s and remains on the cutting edge of urban activism today.

In this book, co-written with David Madden, he argues that the housing question is not an architectural or moral question but a political and economic one with architectural and moral implications. He calls for a comprehensive transformation in the production, distribution and regulation of housing and details a number of progressive possibilities for today's housing situation, offering an account of how a movement for housing justice can be part of a movement to transform the city itself.