In their essay, Professors Reardon and Bischoff provocatively suggest society should pay more attention to the residential isolation of the affluent. They posit that hypersegregation at the high end of the income scale allows the wealthiest families in metropolitan areas to hoard resources and power for themselves while cutting out the other 90% of the population. Their analysis also suggests that residential isolation itself, and the lack of incidental social contact it implies, works against any willingness of the well-off to share their bounty. If rich families were physically dispersed throughout the metropolitan area so that they shared neighborhoods, services, and amenities with other families, the argument runs, the affluent would have both a literal and empathic stake in the lot of the middle- and lower-income classes.

In this response, I want to raise three questions prompted by this analysis. First, is greater residential dispersion of the most affluent necessary to counter the effects Reardon and Bischoff identify? Second, is it sufficient to address those effects? And third, is it feasible?

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