"This introduction begins by looking back historically at the ways that real estate development and planning took place and was intellectualized. An historical perspective helps situate the practices of development and planning as wholly capitalist in nature for much of the history of Western societies, then shifting to serving a broader public purpose with the advent in the U.S. of the 1949 Housing Act and subsequent federal and state legislation that sought to position the development process as a tool to solve urban and subsequently, broader societal, problems. We will discuss the historical development of alternative real estate models globally, with a focus on example in the US and their current role in the US market. We then conclude with the present day debates around the role of real estate development and planning in shaping public and private spaces, focusing on affordable housing, gentrification, alternative models like co-housing, and the YIMBY movement"-- Provided by publisher.