Mapping analysis disclosed that four neighborhoods, which occupied one-quarter of the residential land mass of the city and were home to one-quarter of the population, contained more than half of the city's retail liquor outlets. Three of the neighborhoods were very poor and had large minority populations. The neighborhood with the highest concentration of outlets, however, had one of the lowest levels of poverty in the city and was ethnically quite diverse. Limitations of the study include: (1) census data used in the study do not capture the cultural and normative factors that influence alcohol use; (2) the cutoff of 50 outlets per square mile was essentially arbitrary, while boundaries of neighborhoods are permeable; and (3) the choice of a poor city with a high proportion of minority residents may have skewed study findings. Future research should focus on the cultural norms governing alcohol use and how those norms are likely to vary across neighborhoods and how neighborhood residents feel about the concentration of liquor outlets. Tables, figures, references