This article examines the theoretical foundations upon which the rationale for mixed-income development as a strategy to confront urban poverty is built. The authors focus on four propositions that draw from theories on social networks, social control, culture and behavior, and the political economy of place. They assess available evidence about the relative importance of the four theoretical propositions. They conclude that the most compelling propositions are those that suggest that some low-income residents may benefit from a higher quality of life through greater informal social control and access to higher quality services. They find less evidence that socioeconomic outcomes for low-income residents may be improved through social interaction, network building, and role modeling.

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The notion of community capacity building is both explicit and pervasive in the rhetoric, missions, and activities of a broad range of contemporary community development efforts. However, there is limited clarity about the meaning of capacity and capacity building at the neighborhood level. The author suggests a definitional framework for understanding and promoting community capacity, explores the attempt to operationalize a capacity-building agenda through the examination of two contrasting case studies within a multisite comprehensive community initiative (CCI), and suggests some possible next steps toward building community capacity through social change efforts such as CCIs.The past decade has seen a renewed policy emphasis on community-based approaches to promoting social change and economic development, delivering services, and addressing the needs of people in poverty. 1 The current generation of these efforts includes a growing set of comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs) operating across the country that focus in particular on building the capacity of communities to identify priorities and opportunities and to foster and sustain positive neighborhood change. CCIs are generally guided by a set of broad principles rather than a well-specified intervention model. They highlight the need for comprehensive planning and asset development rather than categorical provision and deficit reduction. They stress 291 AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article is based on research conducted as part of two larger projects funded by the Ford and Annie E. Casey Foundations and benefited from the participation of the other members of the project teams. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of Prue Brown, Avis Vidal, Sudhir Venkatesh, Selma Dansokho, Mark Joseph, and Carla Richards; the research support of Jolyon Wurr, William Mollard, Amanda Toler, Sylvan Robb, and LaShanda Ticer; and the thoughtful reviews of earlier versions by Harold Richman, Ralph Hamilton, Richard Taub, and Susan Campbell and the anonymous reviewers for this journal.

Public policies supporting market‐oriented strategies to develop mixed‐income communities have become ascendant in the United States and a number of other countries around the world. Although framed as addressing both market goals of revitalization and social goals of poverty deconcentration and inclusion, these efforts at ‘positive gentrification’ also generate a set of fundamental tensions — between integration and exclusion, use value and exchange value, appropriation and control, poverty and development — that play out in particular concrete ways on the ground. Drawing on social control theory and the ‘right to the city’ framework of Henri Lefebvre, this article interrogates these tensions as they become manifest in three mixed‐income communities being developed to replace public housing complexes in Chicago, focusing particularly on responses to competing expectations regarding the use of space and appropriate normative behavior, and to the negotiation of these expectations in thecontext of arguments about safety, order, what constitutes ‘public’ space, and the nature and extent of rights to use that space in daily life. Résumé Les politiques publiques favorables aux stratégies de marché pour constituer des communautés à revenus mixtes se propagent aux États‐Unis et dans plusieurs autres pays du monde. Conçues pour répondre à la fois à des objectifs de revitalisation associés au marché et à des objectifs sociaux de déconcentration de la pauvreté et d’inclusion, ces projets de ‘gentrification positive’ génèrent toutefois en ensemble de tensions élémentaires qui s’exercent concrètement sur le terrain (entre intégration et exclusion, valeur d’usage et valeur d’échange, appropriation et contrôle, pauvreté et développement). S’appuyant sur la théorie de la régulation sociale et sur le cadre du ‘droit à la ville’ d’Henri Lefebvre, l’article revient sur les tensions manifestées dans trois communautés à revenus mixtes de Chicago issues du réaménagement de complexes de logements sociaux. Il s’intéresse notamment aux réactions face aux attentes concurrentes quant à l’utilisation de l’espace et à un comportement normatif approprié, et face à la négociation de ces attentes dans un contexte antagoniste sur la sécurité, sur l’ordre, sur ce qui constitue l’espace ‘public’ ainsi que sur la nature et la portée des droits d’utilisation de cet espace au quotidien.

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Public housing residents have long experienced stigma as members of an urban “underclass.” One policy response is the creation of mixed‐income developments; by deconcentrating poverty and integrating residents into communities in which their residences are indistinguishable from neighbors, such efforts might reduce stigma associated with residency in traditional public housing. Through in‐depth interviews with 35 relocated public housing residents and 184 field observations at three mixed‐income developments in Chicago, we find this is not the case. Stigma associated with living in public housing is ameliorated, yet residents report that their experience of stigma has intensified in other ways. The negative response of higher‐income residents, along with stringent screening and rule enforcement, amplifies the sense of difference many residents feel in these contexts. We demonstrate that this new form of stigma has generated a range of coping responses as relocated public housing residents seek to maintain eligibility while buttressing their social identity.

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