In many cities, public housing has come to exemplify concentrated urban poverty and the social problems associated with it. One major policy response to addressing these problems is the demolition and redevelopment of public housing complexes as mixed-income communities.
Several theoretical propositions that lie behind this policy are based on assumptions about the ways in which living among higher-income residents can lead to relationships and interactions that may benefit poor people. Based on in-depth qualitative research in two mixed-income developments in Chicago, this paper explores the dynamics of social interaction in an effort to better understand the processes and factors that influence such interaction on the ground, the differential experience of residents from different backgrounds, and the factors that contribute to their decision-making about and interpretation of social relations with their neighbors. This analysis helps to better interpret the findings of earlier studies and craft more informed expectations about such interactions and their likely effects.Overthepasttwodecades,catalyzedmostnotablybythepublicationofWilliamJuliusWilson's seminal 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged, there has been renewed scholarly interest in urban poverty and, particularly, the problems associated with concentrated urban poverty-how living in high-poverty areas multiplies the deleterious effects of being poor-as well as appropriate policy responses to address these problems. The case of public housing is emblematic. Although initially established to provide reasonable, transitional housing to poor individuals and families (Bowly, 1978), by the 1980s public housing in many cities came to exemplify concentrated urban poverty and the social problems associated with it-high levels of crime and violence, deteriorating housing and physical infrastructure, weak institutions, poor services, social isolation, racial segregation, joblessness, and welfare "dependency" among them.The recognition of these problems led, among other responses, to two major policy directions in the United States. The first is dispersal policies, which range from the development of scatteredsite public housing buildings to the provision of housing vouchers to targeted efforts to relocate