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The twin topics of urban community structure and decision-making pro-cesses pertaining to matters of public policy have increasingly captured the interest of urban sociologists. Over the last two decades, a tradition has grown to integrate these topics with a perspective drawn from the literature on formal organizations and administration. Its distinctive contribution is a conception of community structure as an aggregate network of interor-ganizational relations. Much of this literature was developed by students of social service administration who were concerned with promoting coordi-nation among diverse agencies, which collectively deal with particular social problems. In this article, we critically review the growth of this tradition within the context of other developments in sociology and point to some unsolved problems and potentially fruitful topics for future study. The study of urban social structure dates from the …