In this accessible and passionately argued book, Bob Colenutt goes to the roots of the long-term crisis in housing and planning in the UK. Providing a much-needed, in-depth critique of the nexus of power of landowners, house builders, financial backers and politicians that makes up the property lobby, this radical book reveals how this complex, self-serving and intimidating network perpetuates a cycle of low supply, high prices and poor building which has resulted in one of the biggest social and economic challenges of our time. With radical ideas for solutions, this is essential reading for anyone with an interest in housing, planning and social justice.

A veteran New York Times reporter dissects the most spectacular failure in real estate history Real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of dollars when their much-vaunted purchase of Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village in New York City failed to deliver the expected profits. But how did Tishman Speyer walk away from the deal unscathed, while others took the financial hit—and MetLife scored a $3 billion profit? Illuminating the world of big real estate the way Too Big to Fail did for banks, Other People’s Money is a riveting account of politics, high finance, and the hubris that ultimately led to the nationwide real estate meltdown.

In Urban Land Rent, Anne Haila uses Singapore as a case study to develop an original theory of urban land rent with important implications for urban studies and urban theory. Provides a comprehensive analysis of land, rent theory, and the modern city Examines the question of land from a variety of perspectives: as a resource, ideologies, interventions in the land market, actors in the land market, the global scope of land markets, and investments in land Details the Asian development state model, historical and contemporary land regimes, public housing models, and the development industry for Singapore and several other cities Incorporates discussion of the modern real estate market, with reference to real estate investment trusts, sovereign wealth funds investing in real estate, and the fusion between sophisticated financial instruments and real estate

The complex and self-serving nexus behind the UK's housing crisis is laid bare in this passionate book from Bob Colenutt. Investigating the network of landowners, house-builders, financial backers and politicians, he reveals how we have been forced to accept the cycle of low supply and high prices, and proposes solutions to the housing emergency.

The struggle for the right to housing is a battle over property rights and land use. For housing to be provided as a human need, land must be recognised as a common right. Property, Planning and Protest is a compelling new investigation into public opposition to housing and real estate development. Its innovative materialist approach is grounded in the political economy of land value, and it recognises the conflict between communities and real estate capital as a struggle over land and property rights. Property, Planning and Protest is about a social movement struggling for democratic representation in land-use decisions. The amenity groups it describes champion a democratic plan-led system that allocates land for social and environmental goals. Situating this movement in a history of land reform and common rights, this book sets out a persuasive new vision of democratic planning and affordable housing for all.

A critical appropriation of Brutalism in the crisis conditions of today. The Robin Hood Gardens public-housing estate in East London, completed in 1972, was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson as an ethical and aesthetic encounter with the flux and crises of the social world. Now demolished by the forces of speculative development, this Brutalist estate has been the subject of much dispute. But the clichéd terms of debate—a “concrete monstrosity” or a “modernist masterpiece”—have marginalized the estate’s residents and obscured its architectural originality. Recovering the social in the architectural, this book centers the estate’s lived experience of a multiracial working class, not to displace the architecture’s sensory qualities of matter and form, but to radicalize them for our present. Immersed in the materials, atmospheres, social forms and afterlives of this experimental estate, Robin Hood Gardens is reconstructed here as a socio-architectural expression of our times out of joint.