Housing, especially suburban housing, is often considered as socially and spatially homogeneous. By examining the activities of James Steel, the most important homebuilder in Edinburgh between 1865 and 1904, the varied and subtly differentiated nature of social areas is revealed. This study shows how, to a great extent, the market produced social integration that became a petit-bourgeois, property-owning democracy, rather than socially exclusive areas. This trend distinguished Edinburgh from Glasgow and the west of Scotland, where a conflictual nature and a pronounced socialist orientation developed.