WHAT IS SOCIAL CAPITAL AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO PUBLIC-POLICY - EDITORS INTRODUCTION

This article applies Robert Putnam's concept of social capital to hous ing and urban policy. We review the social capital literature that inf orms public policy and offer a new paradigmatic approach to solving so cial problems. We also introduce and summarize six articles that exami ne how social capital affects housing and community development. The w ork we summarize finds that social capital remains a relatively underd eveloped policy resource. The authors see the enhancement of social ca pital as key to improving the quality of life in low-income neighborho ods. The idea of social capital, as developed in the articles presente d here, structures the complex and often conflicting facts that charac terize poverty into a set of strategic options that point to new, more subtle housing and urban policies.