Peter Marcuse (November 13, 1928 – March 4, 2022) was a German-born American lawyer and professor of

urban planning Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...

Biography

Marcuse was the older son of Sophie Wertheim and philosopher and

critical theorist A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from socia ...

Herbert Marcuse. He was born in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, left Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1934. He obtained a JD from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

in 1952 and a PhD from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in city and regional planning in 1972. He began his career as a lawyer in New Haven and Waterbury, Connecticut, where he served as the majority leader of the Board of Aldermen from 1959 to 1963. In July 1964 he participated in the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, publishing a series of articles about his experience there. He was a member of the Waterbury City Plan Commission from 1964 to 1968, and earned Master's degrees from Columbia in public law and government in 1963, and from Yale in urban studies in 1968. In 1972 he completed his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in city and regional planning, with a thesis on the legal and financial implications of home ownership for low income families. He became a professor of urban planning at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

from 1972 to 1975, then at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

from 1975 to 2003. He wrote extensively on gentrification, various forms of ghettoization (imposed ghettos, "enclaves," and "citadels"),

the right to the city The right to the city is an idea and a slogan first proposed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book . This idea has been taken up more recently by social movements, thinkers, and certain progressive local authorities as a call to action to reclaim th ...

and the

Occupy movement The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of "real democracy" around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and econo ...

. Marcuse had three children with his wife Frances (née Bessler): novelist

Irene Marcuse Irene Marcuse was an American author of mystery novels. She was a finalist for the Agatha Award in 2000. She died March 8, 2021. Marcuse held a BA in Literature and Creative Writing and a Master of Social Work from Columbia University. She was ...

(1953-2021),

UC Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

history professor

Harold Marcuse Harold Marcuse (born November 15, 1957 in Waterbury, Connecticut) is an American professor of modern and contemporary German history and public history. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Pat Dowell"German Filmmaker Tackle ...

(born 1957), and Andrew Marcuse (born 1965). He died on March 4, 2022, at the age of 93.

Books and publications

Peter Marcuse, Graduate Center, CUNY, Nov2016

* * *with James Connolly, Johannes Novy , Ingrid Olivo, Cuz Potter, Justin Steil, ''Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice''. Routledge 2009. ISBN 978-0415687614 *with Neil Brenner and Margit Mayer, * *"From Utopian and Realistic to Transformative Planning," in: Beatrix Haselsberger, ed. ''Encounters in Planning Thought: 16 Autobiographical Essays from Key Thinkers in Spatial Planning'' (Routledge, 2017), pp 35-50. *"From Gerrymandering to Co-Mandering: Redrawing the Lines," in: Andrea Kahn and Carol J. Burns (eds.), ''Site Matters: Strategies for Uncertainty through Planning and Design'' (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 252-266. *"From Gerrymandering to "Social Mandering", ''Progressive City Newsletter'', June 2021, https://www.progressivecity.net/single-post/from-gerrymandering-to-social-mandering

References

External links

Peter Marcuse's personal page
at marcuse.org.
Critical planning and other thoughts
Peter Marcuse's blog. {{DEFAULTSORT:Marcuse, Peter 1928 births 2022 deaths Writers from Berlin Writers from Connecticut Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States American urban planners Yale Law School alumni UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design alumni Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation faculty Public housing in the United States University of California, Los Angeles faculty Connecticut lawyers Connecticut city council members Urban theorists