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This report states that the adoption of different procedures for allocating new housing in South Africa would result in neighbourhoods that are more diverse in terms of race and other characteristics. Yet, the paper seeks to investigate whether mixed neighbourhoods might be characterised by social tensions and conflict, weak social capital, and hence economic disadvantage and political problems.

Conducting research in the Western Cape, the report reveals that many neighbourhoods are characterised by a minimal level of community cohesion in terms of interaction with immediate neighbours. Nevertheless, the paper finds no evidence that the adoption of mechanisms that result in more mixed neighbourhoods would result in undesirable social outcomes.

The main findings of the paper are:

• there was no significant evidence that the quality of community cohesion is lower in more mixed neighbourhoods than in less mixed ones
• in the more racially-mixed neighbourhoods there was no evidence of enduring antipathy across racial lines
• living alongside neighbours from differing races had been a learning experience for many residents - therefore race seems to have become a multi-cultural rather than a hierarchical or exclusionary concept 
• the supposed integrative benefits from coming from the same community of origin come to be outweighed by the positive effects of current contact and interaction in the new neighbourhood
• still, there was strong evidence of antipathy towards immigrants from Somalia and elsewhere.
  
  

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