This article introduces policymakers and scholars to several issues in
the development of city neighborhoods and their residents. It constru
cts a literature review around a tree diagram of problems and solution
s, arguing that this is a,more useful way to organize information than
the social science questions that typically interest academics, Follo
wing this structured overview, I make the following arguments about sp
ace and scale in neighborhood policy: (1) Even if we adopt an individu
alistic model of economic behavior, we do not necessarily need to choo
se ''people'' over ''place.'' (2) The rationale for the development of
neighborhood export jobs remains weak. However, we may be able to ide
ntify a ''preferred policy scale'' for job development and placement c
onnections. This is defined as the scale at which the problem of spati
al mismatch is not solved at the expense of broader economic developme
nt considerations, and vice versa. The research agenda underlying this
simple idea would require more sophisticated and policy-relevant work
on commuting patterns and on the interaction behavior and other compe
titive advantages of firms situated in intra-metropolitan space.