In my first weeks on the job I found in a file cabinet a draft of a paper by Peter titled “The Political Economy of Rent Control: Theory and Strategy,” sent for feedback to the organization’s founder in March 1977. While attending Hunter College, I began working as an organizer at Tenants & Neighbors. He argued that the subject was inherently conservative in order for the earth to survive, our relations to it-and, just as importantly, to one another-would have to be radically altered. In a class on urban sustainability, we read “Sustainability is not enough,” his short essay deconstructing and ultimately smashing the concept of sustainability itself. In graduate school I encountered his scholarly writing, always theoretically and empirically rigorous yet readable and relatable. I came to know Peter first through his published texts, then as a teacher, and finally as a mutual sounding board and collaborator. He helped found important and lasting institutions of left urban planning like Planners for Equal Opportunity (now the Planners Network), and he tirelessly offered his time and energy to grassroots projects for the realization of the right to the city. Peter went on to be one of the world’s most important and influential radical urban planning scholars, melding his research interests in housing, land use, and public space with his political commitments to establishing civil rights, building tenant power, and putting an end to homelessness. Peter was born in Berlin, but when he was six his parents-mathematician Sophie Wertheim and Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse-fled the Nazi regime, taking Peter first to Switzerland and then to the United States.

Peter marcuse in defense of housing