Cities consumed by greed: Alpha city: how London was captured by the super-rich, Rowland Atkinson. Verso, London, 2020. 247 pp., ISBN 9781788737975, $35 USD (hardback).; The property lobby: the hidden reality behind the housing crisis, Bob Colenutt. Policy Press, Bristol, 2020. 184 pp., ISBN 978144348160, $21.11 USD (paperback)

The issues addressed by Atkinson and Colenutt should be central to debates around future housing and urban policy, particularly in the context of coronavirus. Cities consumed by greed: Alpha city: how London was captured by the super-rich, Rowland Atkinson. Colenutt has been following the workings of "the property machine" since the publication of his book of that title in 1975 (Ambrose and Colenutt [1]). Atkinson makes it clear that the super-rich have been allowed to capture London by deliberate, ideologically driven, policies. [Extracted from the article]