This article investigates the determinants of place attachment. The community of limited liability argues that local attachment is the result of local relationships neighbors develop through time. The liberated community argues that only a minority of individual social ties are local. Therefore, people will not experience attachment. The authors argue that local attachment might result from a positive perception of the neighborhood environment. Using a randomly selected sample from one large city in Israel, the differential contributions of these models to the understanding of local attachment are investigated. The results show that attachment to place is expressed by a majority of urban residents. The higher the number of close friends and neighbors that are known and live nearby, the higher the attachment to the neighborhood. Perceptions of the local environment have a direct and independent effect on neighborhood attachment. Implications for the understanding of place attachment are discussed.

This study considers the role of ethnic differences in the relevance of the local community as a network of social relations that provide companionship, friendship and social support. Data for this study were collected from a representative sample of the population in the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-largest metropolitan area in Israel. It was found that measures of investment in the neighbourhood such as home-ownership and stage in the life-cycle were not related to the number of locally based instrumental ties. However, nationality had a negative effect. Israeli Jews reported fewer locally based instrumental ties than the Arab Israelis. The ndings provide partial support for compression theory. Israeli Arabs reported a higher number of locally based instrumental social ties than Israeli Jews. Apparently their higher levels of residential segregation compressed their social relationships to the local neighbourhood more than was the case for Israeli Jews. Implications of the ndings for other theoretical frameworks are discussed.