A Tale of Two Cities: Community Sentiments and Community Evaluation in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh

Urban sociologists assert that community sentiments and community evaluations are important reflections of a society's social order. This paper examines the impact of personal and social attributes of urban dwellers, their perceptions of neighborhood characteristics, and their neighborhood-based social networks, as well as objective characteristics of their neighborhoods, on these two dimensions of people's local community. Using regression analysis on data collected in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, I find that locally-based social networks and perceptions of the neighborhood help explain community sentiments, whereas objective community characteristics and neighborhood perceptions are useful for explaining community evaluation. Differences between the Indianapolis and Pittsburgh analyses are used to suggest possible lines of future research.