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White customer who looked for 40-oz. bottles of malt liquor and lottery tickets for a “hood party.” This episode highlights the fact that Whites visiting or living in a gilded ghetto appreciate Black life either stereotypically, as in this example, or selectively, as in historic preservation efforts. Hyra asserts that some White residents talk about crime and violence as if it makes them sound cool at parties. However, I wondered: why do some Whites talk this way and others do not? Violence occurs occasionally and, unfortunately, residents, regardless of race, need to learn how to adapt to it. The book raises but does not answer the following questions: Is the desire to live the wire a unique feature of gentrifying neighborhoods or did it exist during earlier periods? If it is a new feature, why now? One ofHyra’s other questions is why, notwithstanding proximity between various groups of residents, lifestyle segregation occurs (i.e., between cosmopolitan Whites and working-class Blacks; chapters 5 and 6). Whites and Blacks may live side by side, but they don’t interact and, as a result, these areas lack cohesion. I found the sections dealing with ongoing segregation quite thought-provoking, but the best parts of these chapters are the ethnographic accounts of change. This includes the Black church in conflict with the gay club with the schoolyard/church parking lot turning into a dog park and a Black hair salon being displaced. Hyra’s argument is complex, multilayered, and in sharp contrast to previous work by authors who have their minds made up before they even start their research. In the last chapter, Hyra thinks through what this study means for future “equitable communities” (p. 155). This shows again how Hyra is not only careful but also cares. Yet it leaves us with much to do. If the way to political and economic justice is “bringing together people for shared activities,” (p. 168) thenwemay fall short. I would love to see a deeper exploration of forms of social networking across race and class that come about on the basis of unorganized durable engagements in institutions. For example, would it be possible to achieve social mixing and social interaction via day care, community gardens, and the local public schools—an approachmade difficult in the United States because of the lack of provision of publicly funded day care and the desire of middle-class parents, regardless of race, to send their children to highquality schools? The plea for community organizations to promote socialmixing remindsme of a long-term Dutch resident whom I interviewed about integrative efforts of community organizers in her area, one that has experienced Moroccan inmigration since the 1960s: “I am eating couscous for 20 years now. Still don’t like it.”Maybe the tolerance of differences (e.g., brief encounters sitting near one other but not at the same table) are as good as diversity will get. Perhaps politicians, planners, and activists need to set more realistic expectations. The book asks difficult questions but provides no easy answers. Consequently, it is a must-read for anyone interested in gentrification, social mixing, diversity, and equity. It should provoke selfquestioning and, it is hoped, also much discussion on both sides of the Atlantic.