Robert W. Marans

Recent empirical research has demonstrated that neighborhood quality is associated with residents' evaluation of specific attributes of their housing environment. This paper uses the 1976 Annual Housing Survey to assess the contributions to overall neighborhood quality of people's evaluations of environmental conditions and public services. It considers 1) the extent to which the presence or absence of conditions influences ratings of neighborhoods, 2) the relative importance of conditions and service evaluations in explaining overall neighborhood ratings, and 3) the extent to which the evaluations in households with different background characteristics differ in importance in explaining overall neighborhood ratings.

A sample of the residents of the Detroit metropolitan area evaluated their urban environment for this study of the quality of life. The study was begun in October 1974 and was completed in February 1975. This study was a part of an extensive research project the purpose of which was to produce theoretically important and operationally useful research on the urban environment. The specific purpose of the Detroit area study was to develop valid indicators of the subjective quality of urban life and to examine the residents' evaluations of their environment. Respondents answered questions about the public transportation system, the schools, recreational opportunities, public safety, and housing, neighborhood, and population characteristics. The respondents were either the head, or the spouse of the head, of household and were part of a stratified sample of Detroit area residents. The sample provided adequate representation of both Detroit itself and of the surrounding area, and of racial and economic subgroups. The sample was taken from the geographic area defined as the 1971 Detroit SMSA, which includes Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties. There were 1,194 respondents who answered questions in face-to-face interviews lasting approximately 75 minutes each.