Dr David Madden

Dr David Madden

Associate Professor in Sociology

Department of Sociology

Room No
OLD.4.24
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Languages
English
Key Expertise
Urban Studies, Political Sociology, Social Theory

About me

David Madden is Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of the Cities Programme. He works on urban studies, housing studies, political sociology, and social theory. David holds a PhD from Columbia University.

David Madden, In Defense of Housing

Expertise Details

Urban Studies; Political Sociology; Social Theory

Selected publications

Book

2016. With co-author Peter Marcuse. In Defense of Housing: The politics of crisis. London and New York: Verso. The book has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Czech, Italian, Farsi, Turkish, French and Slovak. A second edition of In Defense of Housing will be published in 2024. 

Journal Articles

Forthcoming. “Beyond the Limits of Rentability: Revalorizing urban space in late neoliberalism.” Environment & Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice.

2024. With Tim White. "Housing Ideology and Urban Residential Change: The rise of co-living in the financialized city." Environment and Planning A: Economy and space 56 (5): 1368-1384.

2023. With Ulises Moreno-Tabarez, Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero, Lindsay Sawyer, Anna Richter, Yimin Zhao, Hanna Baumann and Andrea Gibbons. “Pluriversal Urbanisms.” CITY: Analysis of urban change, theory action 27 (5-6): 691-696.

2023. “Polycritical City?” CITY: Analysis of urban change, theory, action 27 (3-4): 271-274.

2023. “The Politics of Housing Knowledge.” future.lab-Magazin 18:5-7.

2022. “Tired City: On the politics of urban exhaustion.” CITY: Analysis of urban change, theory, action 26 (4): 559-561.

2021. “Disaster Urbanization: The city between crisis and calamity.” Sociologica 15 (1): 91-108.

2020. “The urban process under covid capitalism.” CITY: Analysis of urban change, theory, action 24 (5-6): 677-780.

2020. “Housing and the Crisis of Social Reproduction.” e-flux, 25 June. Available online at https://bit.ly/31FXIh6

2020. With Gibbons, Andrea, Anna Richter, Antonis Vradis, Debbie Humphry, Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, and Michele Lancione. “For the City yet to come.” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 24 (1-2): 1-4.

2019. “City of Emergency.” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 23 (3): 281-284.

2019. “The Names of Urban Dispossession.” Urban Geography 40 (6): 888-892.

2018. “Pushed Off the Map: Toponymy and the politics of place in New York City.” Urban Studies 55 (8): 1599-1614.

2017. “A Catastrophic Event.” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 21 (1): 1-5.

2016. “Designing Against the Public.” Topos: The international review of landscape architecture and urban design 96: 52-59.

2014. “Neighborhood as Spatial Project: Making the urban order on the downtown Brooklyn waterfront.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (2): 471-497.

2012. “City Becoming World: Nancy, Lefebvre and the global-urban imagination.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (5): 772-787.

2011. With Neil Brenner and David Wachsmuth. “Between Abstraction and Complexity: Meta-theoretical observation on the assemblage debate.” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 15 (6): 740-750.

2011. With Neil Brenner and David Wachsmuth. “Assemblage urbanism and the challenges of critical urban theory.” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 15 (2): 225-240.

2010. “Revisiting the End of Public Space: Assembling the public in an urban park.” City and Community 9 (2): 187-207.

Book Chapters

2023. “Unlocking the Housing Question.” Pp 10 – 14 in Housing Unlocked: Idea from a living room. Irish Architecture Foundation.

2022. “Obdachlosigkeit und Wohnungswesen” (Homelessness and the Housing System). Pp 36-41 in Daniel Talesnik and Andres Lepik, eds, Who’s Next? Obdachlosigkeit, architektur und die stadt. Munich: ArchiTangle.

2017. “The Contradictions of Global Urban Public Space: The view from New York and London.” In Ricky Burdett and Suzanne Hall, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Urban Sociology: New approaches to the twenty-first century city. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

2017. Neil Brenner, David J. Madden and David Wachsmuth. “Assemblage, Actor-Networks and the Challenges of 
Critical Urban Theory.” Pp 237-260 in Neil Brenner, Critique of Urbanization: Selected essays. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH.

2015. “Spatial Projects: The politics of neighborhood in New York.” Pp 3-12 in Housing After the Neoliberal Turn: International case studies. Berlin: Spector Books.

2013. “City Becoming World: Nancy, Lefebvre and the global-urban imagination.” Pp 505-522 in Implosions/Explosions: Towards a study of planetary urbanization. Neil Brenner, ed. Berlin: Jovis.

2011. “Assemblage, actor-networks and the challenges of critical urban theory.” Pp 117-137 in Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical urban theory and the right to the city, Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse and Margit Mayer, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2011). Turkish translation, 2014:  “Assemblajlar, Aktör-Ağlar ve Eleştirel Kent Teorisinin Karşilaştiği Zorluklar,” pp 155-181 in Kâr İçin Değil Halk İçin: Eleştirel Kent Teorisi Ve Kent Hakkı.  Istanbul: Sel.

Reviews and Commentary

2022. With Simon Güntner, Andrej Holm, Margit Mayer and Hilary Silver. “Soziale Bewegungen, die Wohnungsfrage und kritische Theorie  ein Gespräch in Erinnerung an Peter Marcuse.” Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen 36 (1): 112-128. 

2021. With Alexander Vasudevan. “Berlin’s rent cap, though defeated in court, shows how to cool overheated markets.” The Guardian, 23 April.

2021. “Red London in Tory Britain.” Jacobin, 26 January.

2020. “Housing and the Crisis of Social Reproduction.” e-flux, 25 June.

2020. “Our cities only serve the wealthy. Coronavirus could change that.” The Guardian, 22 June.

2020. “‘The Collective Work of Art We Call the City.’” Jacobin, 2 April.

2020. With Glyn Robbins. “The Limits of Liberal Urbanism.” Jacobin, 28 March.

2019. “Why has everyone shelved Britain’s broken housing system this election?” The Guardian, 10 December.

2019. “Why we should go back to the Addison Act to build cities fit for the future.” The Big Issue, 1 August.

2019. “The fight for fair housing is finally shifting power from landlords to residents ” The Guardian, 3 July.

2019. “City Talk.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Spotlight On Cities and Language. 

2016. “A Homegrown Housing Crisis.” The Guardian, 5 October.

2016. David Madden and Peter Marcuse. “No Rent for Rats.” Jacobin, 22 November.

2016. David Madden and Peter Marcuse. “The Permanent Crisis of Housing.” Jacobin, 2 October. Bosnian-Croation-Serbian translation, 2016: “Stalna kriza stanovanja,” Mašina, 14 October.

2016. “Designing Against the Public.” Topos: The international review of landscape architecture and urban design 96: 52-59.

2015. “An Idea of Progress.” Commissioned text for Iván Argote: An Idea of Progress.  Exhibition at Space Studios, London.

2015. “Five myths about public housing.” Washington Post, 13 September 2015.

2015. “There Is a Politics of Urban Knowledge Because Urban Knowledge Is Political: A rejoinder to ‘Debating urban studies in 23 steps.’” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy action 19 (2-3): 297-302.

2015. “Book Review: Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space.” American Journal of Sociology 120 (2): 604-606.

2015. “Book Review: Cities Full of Symbols.” Contemporary Sociology 44 (1): 100-101.

2014. “Book Review: Offshoring.” Theory, Culture & Society web reviews, 16 September.

2013. “Book Review: Remaking London.” LSE Review of Books, 23 November.

2013. “Gentrification doesn’t trickle down to help everyone.” The Guardian, 10 October.

2013. “Book Review: Globalization, Modernity and the City.” Economic Geography 89 (3): 311-312.

2012. “Book Review: The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal.” LSE Review of Books.

2012. “Poor Man’s Penthouse” (review essay on the film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth). CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 16 (3): 377-381.

2012. With co-author Antonis Vradis. “From Athens to Occupy and Back: Introduction to cities in upheaval.” CITY: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 16 (1-2): 235-236.

2010. “Urban ANTs: A review essay.” Qualitative Sociology 33 (4): 583-590.

Research

David's research interests include housing, public space, urban restructuring, and critical urban theory. He has conducted qualitative, ethnographic and archival research in New York City and London. He is co-author, with Peter Marcuse, of In Defense of Housing: The politics of crisis (Verso, 2016). His writing has appeared in leading urban sociology journals as well as The Guardian, the Washington Post, and Jacobin

David is part of the Urban Sociology research cluster.

Teaching and PhD supervision

David Madden co-directs the MSc City Design and Social Science Programme.  He convenes an undergraduate module on Urban Society, a postgraduate modules on Urban Social Theory and the City Design: Research Studio.