ABSTRACT
The concept of social capital has been the most remarkable success story of the social sciences since the 1990s. This chapter argues that the city, in all its complexity and grandeur, poses a major challenge to this agenda. Urban researchers have been studying social capital, though not under that name, for a long time, and have developed powerful understandings of the processes that both divide and unify urban dwellers. The chapter also argues that the social capital debate rehearses long-standing themes in community studies, yet in a way which is 'urgent' and which cannot be shrugged off. This leads to two specific analytical themes that frame this collection. Segregation, in residence, as well as in appropriation of other sites, is an organization of space that both results from social capital, and as we have argued above, that affects further capital formation precisely because spatial arrangements can affect network formations.
